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Zana (Abkhaz: Зана, romanized: Zana) was a woman who lived in the second half of the 19th century in Abkhazia, South Caucasus. According to legend, she was an Almas ("forest woman") of great proportions entirely covered in hair, captured by hunters in the forests of Abkhazia in the 19th century. The residents of the village of Tkhina and cryptozoologists controversially considered Zana to be a wild man or a yeti;^[1][2][3][4] these theories are nowadays largely considered to be influenced by local folklore.

In 2021, the presumed skull of Zana, exhumed from a grave in a family cemetery, was deemed to be human, being of an elderly woman with distinct equatorial features.^[1][4] DNA analysis of Zana (and six of her descendants) showed her to be of Central African origin within the population of Homo sapiens.^[1][5][3] The appearance and behavior of Zana described in the legend could be explained by a genetic disorder known as congenital generalized hypertrichosis.^[5][1]

Zana was found living in the forests near Mount Zaadan when Prince Achba caught her during a hunting trip. With the help of his assistants, they lured in the wild woman. As the object of their hunt approached, the hunters ambushed and bound her.^{[citation needed]}

According to eye-witnesses, upon closer inspection, the wild creature turned out to be a two-meter tall woman, covered in dark brown hair, particularly thick on the lower parts of her body. The hair averaged the length of a palm. The skin underneath was dark gray. Her face also had hair, though much shorter. The hair on her head grew almost from her eyebrows, and reached down her back. Her eyes were red, and she had a broad, flat face with large features, as well as a sloping low forehead, wide mouth, and a prominent lower jaw.^{[citation needed]}

The woman was named Zana. Prince Achba gave her as a gift to his friend, Prince Chelokua, who in turn gave her to Prince Edgi Genaba, who brought her to his estate in the village of Tkhina on the Mokvi River, 78 kilometers from Sukhumi.^{[citation needed]}

Initially, Prince Genaba kept her in a stockade of vertical logs and chained her^[3] because of her wild temperament. Gradually, they were able to tame her. After three years, she was freely walking around the village like the other locals. She slept in a pit she dug herself, both in winter and summer, though she sometimes preferred sleeping in the ashes of a fire. She refused to wear clothes and only near the end of her life did she learn to wear a loincloth. According to witnesses, she could run as fast as a horse and could lift an 80-kilogram sack with one hand. Her favorite pastimes, according to eyewitnesses, were swimming in the river and drinking alcohol. She did some work that required significant physical strength. She never learned to speak, but she recognized her name. She made abrupt cries, grunts, and growls. When she was happy, she made a high-pitched metallic laugh but never smiled.^{[citation needed]}

During her time in the village, Zana had intimate relationships with several men, including Prince Genaba, and gave birth to five children. The first child, fathered by the prince, was intentionally drowned by Zana. The other children born to Zana were immediately taken from her. The time of Zana's death, as well as the place of her burial, is not known for certain. Another witness, Zenob Chokua, who saw Zana while still a child, was able to describe her in detail.

She died in the 1880s. By the end of her life, there were no signs of aging—no gray hair, and no weakened or missing teeth.^{[citation needed]}

Her four children, two girls and two boys, were named respectively Gomaza, Kodjanir, Janda, and Khwit. The fate of three of them is unknown. Only her youngest son Khwit stayed in the village and married twice. From his second wife, Maria, Khwit had a daughter named Raisa, who was interviewed by researchers. Khwit died in 1954^[4] at the age of 67.^[2] It was discovered that the father of Zana's youngest son, Khwit, was a local shepherd named Sabekia, who raised him and gave him his surname.^[2][3]

Khwit and, presumably, Zana herself were buried in the village cemetery.^{[4][citation needed]}

Research on Zana began in 1962, when Moscow biologist Alexander Mashkovtsev traveled to the village. There, he heard stories about Zana from the local residents. He soon passed them on to historian and cryptozoologist Boris Porshnev (the main Soviet enthusiast in the search for "relict hominids"^[4]). Together with colleagues, Porshnev went to Tkhina to find elderly people who had seen Zana in person^[1] after more than 70 years had passed since her death. Though these witnesses were over a hundred years old, they still vividly remembered the events related to Zana.^{[citation needed]}

In 1975, historian Igor Dmitrievich Burtsev continued the research. Initially, no one could locate Zana's grave, but the burial site of her son Khwit, who died in 1954, was preserved. Burtsev also met Khwit's daughter, Raisa, born in 1934 from his second marriage. According to Burtsev, Raisa had African facial features, slightly curly hair, and grayish skin.^[2][3] After a long search, Burtsev found Zana's grave. He conducted excavations and obtained the skulls of Khwit and, presumably, Zana herself.^[3][4]

Years later, Burtsev's research caught the attention of American scientists studying the genome and lifestyle of Neanderthals. In a laboratory for Neanderthal genetics at New York University, Burtsev brought Khwit Sabekia's skull after struggling to get permission to exhume the grave. Studies based on the skull material were supposed to determine whether Zana herself had been a Neanderthal.^[2]

Both skulls, as of 2015, are kept by Burtsev in Moscow.^[4]

There is a theory that Zana, who had dark skin, could have been a representative of the Afro-Abkhazians. However, eyewitnesses who saw Zana claimed that she had nothing in common with them. The main argument against her Afro-Abkhazian origin was her abundant body hair.

According to poet and writer Fazil Iskander, elderly people who knew Zana may have exaggerated her body hair to attract public attention to the village.^[2]

Descriptions of Zana herself exist only in stories, and photographs of her descendants and one of their skulls do not exhibit traits that would prove Zana was a relict hominid.^[6]

The skull, which some enthusiasts believe belonged to Zana, as reported by I. Burtsev, is not necessarily hers. The skeleton was found near other graves excavated in the search for Zana. This burial was distinctive for the crouched position of the body, while Islamic burial customs require the body to be laid out straight. The skull itself belonged to an elderly woman and has distinctly equatorial features: pronounced prognathism, a convex forehead, slightly forward-facing cheekbones, a wide nose, flattened nasal bones, and a broad interocular space.

Khwit's skull is indeed impressive: powerful brow ridges, a large face, a wide nose, and a pronounced occiput. However, by all accounts, he was Homo sapiens. The man was undoubtedly remarkable, but his size was not unusually rare for the Caucasus. The large brow ridge does not have the character of a ridge (as it would in a Neanderthal), and the so-called supraorbital triangle (flattening at the base of the zygomatic process of the frontal bone—a typical sapiens trait) is clearly expressed. The temporal bone and the lower jaw structure are also distinctly modern.

Geneticist Bryan Sykes from Oxford University conducted a DNA analysis of six of Zana's descendants and her son Khwit, concluding that Zana was a modern human of near-exclusively West African descent, giving credence to the theory of her being Afro-Abkhazian. According to him, Zana was likely descended from slaves brought to Abkhazia by Turkish Ottomans, possibly hailing from the area of modern-day Cameroon. Another hypothesis by Sykes suggested that she belonged to a group of people who left Africa about 100,000 years ago and supposedly lived secretly in the Caucasus mountains ever since, however this theory had been discredited by the scientific community.^[3] The genetic material for the research was provided by Burtsev, who also facilitated Sykes’ meeting with six living descendants of Zana, from whom saliva samples were taken for analysis. In 2015, several popular media outlets, including British ones, published reports falsely claiming that Professor Bryan Sykes had found through DNA analysis that Zana was a yeti. Despite proving to be a hoax, these publications seriously damaged the scientist's reputation.^[3]

Zana's description resembles people with atavistic traits (hypertrichosis—excessive hair growth, including facial hair, a sloping forehead). Moreover, hypertrichosis can be acquired due to hormonal changes from hunger and deprivation. Excess body hair is also common in feral children. It is often assumed that Zana may have been a mentally impaired girl who got lost in the forest and became wild. This could also explain the origin of another "wild man" captured in the mountains of Dagestan in December 1941 by Colonel Karapetyan's detachment. According to Karapetyan, this individual was a deaf-mute and mentally ill person completely covered in hair.^[3]

In 2021, an article was published detailing the DNA research of Zana and Khwit. Zana and Khwit were found to belong to the common African mitochondrial haplogroup L2 [] (subclade L2b1b1*^[7]). Khwit himself belonged to Y-chromosomal haplogroup R1b1a1b-M269 (subclade R1b1a1b1b-Z2103>Y4364>FGCLR459>FTA50400). It is possible that Zana had a genetic disorder, such as congenital generalized hypertrichosis, which could partly explain her unusual behavior, lack of speech, and long body hair.^[5]

By the end of 2021, three complete genome sequences of the presumed Zana, Khwit, and his relatives were completed. Results from independent laboratories indicated that the genetic lineage of the woman thought to be Zana originated from central equatorial Africa (between South Sudan and West Africa), while her son Khwit's genetic lineage was located between African and European or Caucasian populations.^[1]

Many Russian cryptozoologists believe Zana was a representative of the yeti.^[1]

Abkhaz poet and writer Fazil Iskander briefly described Zana's origin story in his work The Human Campsite. The main character, Viktor Kartashov, tells the story of a mentally handicapped but large-framed woman who escaped into the mountains and became wild.^[2]

Boris Porshnev described Zana's story in his story "The Struggle for the Troglodytes".^[8]