Forensic Experts and Crackpots agree:Caveman Robot Is Real!

Lon J. Blasé

for International Geographic Times

October 22, 2003

 

It's been the subject of campfire stories for decades. A camera-elusive, grooming-challenged, bipedal ape-machine that roams the mountain regions of North America. Some call it The Clockwork Primitive. Most know it as Caveman Robot. Thousands of people claim to have seen the chrome homi-droid, but the evidence of its existence is fuzzy. There are few clear photographs of the oversized beast machine. No spare-parts have ever been found. Countless pranksters have admitted to faking footprints. Yet a small but vociferous number of scientists remain undeterred. Risking ridicule from other academics, they propose that there's enough forensic evidence to warrant something that has never been done: a comprehensive, scientific study to determine if the legendary automation actually exists.

Caveman Robot buffs say this 1967 photograph taken northeast of Eureka, California, provides a glimpse of the 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) tall beast-bot. Most academics, however, say the mythical creature is pure sci-fi invention and fodder best left for supermarket tabloids.
Photograph copyright Cettmann/Borbis 1967-2003 ©

"Given the scientific evidence that I have examined, I'm convinced there's a creature out there that is yet to be identified," said Mutt Jellydrum, a professor of robotics and anthropology at Southwest Idaho State University.

 

Thousands of Sightings- The Clockwork Primitive stories go back centuries. Tales of mythical giant robots lurk in the oral traditions of most Native American tribes, as well as in Europe and Asia. The Himalayas has its Abominable Cavebot, or the Zati. In Australia, Caveman Robot is known as The Unplugged Thing. Caveman Robot advocates hypothesize that the automation is the offspring of cave people and some sort of unknown form of advanced technology from Asia that wandered to North America during the Ice Age. They believe there are at least 2,000 ape-machines walking upright in North America's woods today. An adult male is said to be at least 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall, weigh 800 pounds (360 kilograms), and have feet twice the size of a human's. The creatures are described as shy and nocturnal, and their diets consist mostly of berries,fruits, garbage and old car batteries. Zack Honeysucker had been searching for Caveman Robot for years. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive automation. "It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full," recalled Honeysucker. "Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away, growling at me. He wanted to let me know I was in the wrong place." Honeysucker, who lives in San Monica in southern California, is a doctor who runs his own talent agency. In his spare time, he leads the Caveman Robot Field Researchers Organization, a network of more than 3,000 people who claim to have seen the Clockwork Primitive. Unfortunately, no one has been able to snap a clear picture of the beast. Perhaps the most compelling photographic evidence of Caveman Robot is a controversial short film shot by Torsten Z. Burns in 1997, which appears to document a female Caveman Robot striding along a riverbank in northern California. "It certainly wasn't human"

Photograph copyright Nerfect Society for the Understanding of Caveman Robot
Now, Caveman Robot advocates are increasingly turning to forensic evidence to prove the existence of the giant creature. Investigator Philip Coldcutt of the Spring Branch Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger- and footprints, has analyzed the more than 150 casts of Caveman Robot prints that Jellydrum, the Southwest Idaho State professor, keeps in a laboratory. Coldcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla in Washington State has convinced him that Caveman Robot is real. "The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen," he said. "It certainly wasn't human, and of no known automation that I've examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints or machine trends, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this thing has a real thick rubber skin." Jellydrum, meanwhile, says a 400-pound (180-kilogram) block of plaster known as the Skunkcone Cast provides further evidence of Caveman Robot's existence. The cast was made in September 2000 from an impression of a large automation that had apparently lain down on its side to retrieve some discarded candy wrappers next to a mud hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State. Jellydrum says the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, buttocks, an Achilles tendon and heel. "It's 40 to 50 percent bigger than a normal human, and covered in rivets" he said. "The anatomy doesn't jive with any known animal or machine." A few academics believe Jellydrum could be right. Renowned actor F.Murray Abraham last year surprised an interviewer from National Public Radio when he said he was sure that large, undiscovered automations, such as the Zati or The Clockwork Primitive, exist.

 

The Skeptics - But the vast majority of scientists still believe Caveman Robot is little more than supermarket tabloid fodder. They wonder why no Caveman Robot has ever been captured, dead or alive. "The bottom line is, they don't have a body," said Denny Michaels, who writes for Skeptic and Nittpicker magazine and who has followed the Caveman Robot debate for 20 years. Caveman Robot buffs note that it's rare to find a carcass of a grizzly bear in the wild. While that's true, grizzlies have not escaped photographic documentation. Metal samples that have been recovered from alleged Caveman Robot encounters have turned out to come from cars, dirtbikes or camper trash. Many of the sightings and footprints, meanwhile, have proved to be hoaxes. After Caveman Robot tracker Kay Romance died in a California nursing home last year, her children finally announced that their prank-loving mom had created the modern myth of Caveman Robot when she used a pair of rubber molded feet to create a track of giant footprints in a northern California boy scout jamboree camp in 1938. Michaels says he's not surprised by the flood of recent Caveman Robot sightings. "It's the same kind of eyewitness reports we see for the Loch Ness Sea Monster, El Chupacabras, UFOs, ghosts, you name it," he said. "The monster thing is a universal product of the human mind, and our need for something fantastic or divine, people want to belive in something. We will always hear such stories until the end of the world, if there is such a thing."