Grover Krantz

Skeletons of Grover Krantz and Clyde in the Smithsonian Institution

Grover Sanders Krantz (born November 5, 1931 in Salt Lake City , † February 14, 2002 in Port Angeles , Washington , USA ) was Professor of Anthropology at Washington State University . In the course of his career he has written more than 60 specialist articles and 10 books on human tribal history and carried out field research in Europe, China and Java . Krantz was also involved in the controversy about the Kennewick man and managed against the will of the local Indian tribes that this could be scientifically examined.

In addition to his work in evolutionary anthropology and primatology , Krantz also dealt with reports on Bigfoot , for which he was heavily criticized by his colleagues. His articles on this topic have been rejected several times by peer-reviewed publications. He is considered the only scientist who has recently dealt seriously with the subject.

biography

Krantz was born in Salt Lake City in 1931. His parents were devout Mormons , but he was not religious himself. From 1949 he studied for a year at the University of Utah and then enlisted in the Air National Guard , from which he was honorably discharged in 1953. He then continued his studies at the University of California, Berkeley , where he received a Bachelor of Science in 1955 and a Master of Science in 1958 . In 1971 he received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota with the dissertation The Origins of Man for a Doctor of Philosophy ( PhD ). He was married to Evelyn Einstein for thirteen years .

In the early 1960s, Krantz worked as an assistant at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley before he was appointed to Washington State University in 1968, where he stayed until his retirement in 1998. After his death, Washington State University donated a scholarship in his honor to support research in the fields of anthropology, linguistic archeology, and / or human demography .

In the 1970s, Krantz researched fossils of Ramapithecus , an extinct genus of primate considered by many anthropologists to be the ancestor of modern humans, and disproved this hypothesis. He was also interested in Homo erectus , particularly in terms of language development and possible hunting strategies, which he said are responsible for many of the anatomical differences between H. erectus and modern humans. Further studies dealt with the appearance of humans in prehistoric Europe, the development of the Indo-European languages and the function of the mastoid process . In addition, Krantz published on the development of Paleolithic tools, taxonomy and culture of the Neanderthals , the Quaternary extinction wave , fluctuations in the sea level and the role of sexual intercourse in prehistoric humans.

In 1996, Krantz was involved in the controversy surrounding the prehistoric Kennewick man and, in scientific discourse as well as in court, was of the opinion that, due to his anatomical features, he could not be a direct ancestor of today's North American natives and therefore not subject to the provisions of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act falls. The remains were eventually released for exploration. After a reassessment of the NAGPRA 2010, the return of the Kennewick man to the people of the Columbia Plateau was considered and implemented in 2017. On February 17, 2017, the remains were buried in an undisclosed location.

Bigfoot Research

From 1963, Krantz also studied Bigfoot , for which he used the name Sasquatch , an Anglicization of the word sásq'ets ([ ˈsæsqʼəts ], wild man ) from the Halkomelem language. Since he was often criticized for this by his research colleagues and his corresponding manuscripts were rejected by peer-reviewed journals, he published some popular science books on the subject and also appeared on TV programs on the subject. His hypothesis to explain the reports about the "ape-men" were surviving residual populations of Gigantopithecus , which immigrated 300,000 years ago over the Bering Land Bridge from East Asia to North America, which was later used by the first humans to colonize North America . In 1971 he published his first specialist article on the subject in the North American Research Notes .

In January 1985, Krantz tried to scientifically describe the Bigfoot as Gigantopithecus blacki at a congress of the International Society of Cryptozoology . This was rejected by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature because G. blacki already existed as a taxon and Krantz did not have a holotype . Krantz argued that his plaster casts of the footprints were sufficient as a holotype and later suggested G. canadensis as a name. His corresponding manuscript "A Species Named from Footprints" was rejected by scientific publications.

Death and afterlife

Grover Krantz died on 14 February 2002 at his home in Port Angeles of pancreatic cancer . He made his body available for research, but linked it to the condition that his skeleton must be kept with those of his Irish Wolfhounds Clyde, Icky and Yahoo. In 2009, his skeleton was exhibited along with Clyde's skeleton at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History as part of a special exhibition on osteology .

Publications (selection)

• Climatic Races and Descent Groups (1980, ISBN 0-8158-0390-7 )
• The Process of Human Evolution (1982, 1995, ISBN 0-87073-347-8 )
• Geographical Development of European Languages (1988, ISBN 0-8204-0800-X )
• Only A Dog (1998, 2008, ISBN 978-988-17324-1-5 )

• The Scientist Looks at the Sasquatch (Moscow: University Press of Idaho, 1977, with Roderick Sprague )
• The Scientist Looks at the Sasquatch II (Moscow: University Press of Idaho, 1979, with Roderick Sprague)
• Big Footprints: A Scientific Inquiry Into the Reality of Sasquatch (Boulder: Johnson Books, 1992)
• Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence (Seattle: Hancock House, 1999 ISBN 0-88839-447-0 )

Web links

• Using his cranium . Washington Post , July 5, 2006 (accessed June 7, 2011)
• Grover Krantz Donated His Body to Science, On One Condition… on Smithsonian.com (accessed June 7, 2011)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Donald Tyler E .: An expert on human evolution, a long-distance driver . In: Washington State Magazine , Washington State University, August 2002. Retrieved September 12, 2009. 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Grover Krantz . In: The Daily Telegraph , March 6, 2002. Retrieved September 12, 2009. "He joined Washington State University in 1968 as a physical anthropologist, and, over subsequent years published 10 books and more than 60 articles on human anthropology." 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Peter Carlson: Using His Cranium: Grover Krantz's Last Wish Was to Remain With His Friends. And He Has. . In: The Washington Post , July 5, 2006. Retrieved September 12, 2009. 
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Loren Coleman: Grover S. Krantz (1931-2002) . Retrieved September 12, 2009. 
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Mark Rahner: Grover Krantz, foremost Bigfoot expert, dies at 70 . In: The Seattle Times , February 18, 2002. Retrieved September 12, 2009. 
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Tom Paulson: A student of Sasquatch, Prof. Grover Krantz, dies . In: Seattle Post-Intelligencer , February 18, 2002. Retrieved September 12, 2009. 
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Brian Regal: Amateur versus professional: the search for Bigfoot . In: Endeavor . 32, No. 2, June 2008, pp. 53-7. doi : 10.1016 / j.endeavor.2008.04.005 . PMID 18514914 . Retrieved September 11, 2009.
8. ↑ Bruce Barcott: Sasquatch Is Real! Forest Love Slave Tells All! . In: Mariah Media Inc. (Ed.): Outside . August 2002, pp. 1-8. Retrieved September 12, 2009.
9. ^ ^{A b c d e} Brian Regal: Entering Dubious Realms: Grover Krantz, Science, and Sasquatch Archived from the original on March 6, 2012. In: Annals of Science . 66, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 83-102. doi : 10.1080 / 00033790802202421 . PMID 19831199 . Retrieved September 13, 2009.
10. ^ Department Scholarships . Department of Anthropology, Washington State University. Archived from the original on June 16, 2009. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 12, 2009. 
11. ^ Krantz, Grover S. "The Fossil Record of Sex." In: Sexual Dimorphism in Homo Sapiens: A Question of Size , ed. Roberta L. Hall (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp. 85-105.
12. ^ Douglas Preston: The Lost Man . In: The New Yorker . 73, No. 16, June 16, 1997, ISSN  0028-792X , pp. 70-81. Retrieved September 13, 2009.
13. ↑ Kennewick Man ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the Burke Museum in Seattle (accessed June 7, 2011) 
14. ^ Bright, William (2004). Native American Place Names of the United States . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 422. ISBN 978-0-8061-3576-2
15. ↑ Jane Christmas: Giant ape lived alongside humans . In: Daily News , McMaster University, November 7th, 2005. Archived from the original on February 6th, 2012 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved September 13, 2009.  
16. ^ Grover S. Krantz: Sasquatch Handprints . In: North American Research Notes . 5, No. 1, pp. 145-51.
17. ↑ ^{a b} Meldrum, D. Jeffrey (October 2007). " Ichnotaxonomy of giant hominoid tracks in North America (PDF; 3.3 MB)" In: Lucas, Spielmann and Lockley, eds., 2007, Cenozoic Vertebrate Tracks and Traces. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 42 (1): 225-31. Retrieved September 12, 2009.
18. ↑ Grover Krantz Donated His Body to Science, On One Condition ... on Smithsonian.com (accessed June 7, 2011)