Case file · Cryptid
Marie-Jeanne Koffmann's almasty survey
French-born Soviet surgeon and mountaineer Marie-Jeanne Koffmann spent decades collecting hundreds of eyewitness accounts of the almasty, a hairy wild man, in the Kabardino-Balkaria region of the North Caucasus.
1959 CE · 43.55, 43.35 · status: claim
The account
A member of the 1958 Pamir expedition, Koffmann ran field seasons in the Caucasus from the late 1950s and through the 1990s, gathering testimony, footprint casts and hair. She published in French and Russian journals and argued that the almasty was a real, rare hominid.
The sceptical view
Despite decades of work, no body, bones or photograph resulted. Almasty hair tested in the 2014 Oxford study came from bears, horses and cattle.
Connections in the atlas
- The 'wild man' captured in Dagestan
- Soviet Academy 'snowman' expedition to the Pamirs
- Zana of Abkhazia
- Almas
- The Oxford 'anomalous primate' DNA study