Episode 6 – Neanderthal
Max sat quiet for a while looking at several files, “The way I see it you’ve got two plans of attack: first, go find a cryptid, something spectacular that will get you back in the light. Or you find one of the agents listed in these reports.”
“How would I do that? This is a secret organization…?”
“Glenn wasn’t a secret. My guess is that this group looks for zoologists and others to recruit, then keeps their other activities off the books. That allows them to use the best zoologists not only to find their animals but discredit anyone else who tries to prove their sightings. All that being said I still think you need to find and capture one of these things alive to use as leverage…but I don’t think this is one you’ll be able to use.”
Max hands me a memo labeled “Homo Neanderthalis” it’s only a single sheet of paper and comes from Director Krohn to Glenn.
Glenn,
Thank you for your comments on the possible existence of Neanderthals in South America. The Maricoxi are an intriguing prospect, though many feel that Percy Fawcett’s 1914 encounter is insufficient evidence to mount the type of expedition needed to verify their existence. To date many of the reports used to support the existence of a relic Neanderthal population is sketchy at best. Not only is it hard to believe that Neanderthal migrated to South America it is uncertain it is unlikely that any testing we could perform in the field would verify that they are indeed a relic population. While we are convinced that the European legends of Trolls originate from contact with Neanderthals and that it is likely a population still exists in the Caucasus Mountains to Southern Mongolia we need only to look at the Zana incident to see how difficult it will be to verify their existence.
You may not be aware that we have received genetic tests back from the samples we collected from Zana’s children (it is hard to find Zana’s grave as she lived one hundred and sixty years ago). The results came back as normal which has one several meanings:
1) We got the wrong children.
2) Zana was human and not an Almas.
3) There has been continual interbreeding between humans and Almas meaning that the extant population is diluted too much from its original genetic profile to be considered Neanderthal.
4) Perhaps the disturbing, Neanderthal is human, not a separate species as we believe.
There are several agents who believe that Neanderthal represents the possibility of a broader variance in human populations than we have typically believed. If this is true then verifying the Maricoxi maybe impossible without bringing back a specimen either alive or dead and that is made more difficult by the noted aggression demonstrated by the Maricoxi. In your own proposal you stated the need for at least ten highly armed military or mercenaries as escorts. I’m sorry, Glenn, but at this time we do not have the resources to dedicate to this endeavor.
“Tom, maybe you should leave these monkeys alone and focus on animals that might be more local?”
“Like what?”
“How about the Chupacabra?”
Tags: Almas, Cryptid, Cryptozoology, Maricoxi, Neanderthal