Zana of Abkhazia
According to legend, Zana was a huge, hair-covered 'wild woman' captured in the forests of Abkhazia in the mid-19th century, kept in the village of Tkhina, who bore children to local men.
1850 CE · 42.85, 41.55 · status: explained
The account
Boris Porshnev collected villagers' stories in the 1960s and presented Zana as a living almasty, perhaps a relict Neanderthal. He searched for the graves of Zana and her son Khwit without success. Khwit's skull was later studied, and in 2021 a skull from a family cemetery, Tkhina-75, was identified genetically as Zana's.
The sceptical view
DNA from Zana and six descendants shows she was a modern human of mostly East African ancestry, probably an enslaved woman brought through the Ottoman trade. Her described appearance may reflect congenital hypertrichosis and the prejudice of her captors.
Connections in the atlas
- The 'wild man' captured in Dagestan
- Soviet Academy 'snowman' expedition to the Pamirs
- Marie-Jeanne Koffmann's almasty survey
- The Oxford 'anomalous primate' DNA study
- Almas