What’s the craziest thing throughout history that has never fully been explained?

 

There’s one story that has always absolutely fascinated me. Zana of Abkhazia is the one that always does it for me. She was an ape-like woman who was captured in what is now the country of Georgia, then a part of Russia. It was the year 1850 and no one had ever seen something quite like Zana…

It was a group of Georgian hunters who first captured Zana, that fateful day in 1850. She was an enormous person, taller than any of the men, perhaps 6′6″ or 6′7″ and much of her body was covered in thick, course hair. She had a large chest, thick arms and legs, and enormous hands larger than those of any man. It took twelve men to overpower her and bring her to the nearest village.

Based on her skull shape and her powerful physique, some assumed Zana was an off-shoot of the Neanderthal, perhaps one of the last remaining of her kind. Others thought she was a Yeti, a magical creature. She never learned how to speak human language, although she was able to make herself understood with basic gestures. Wild at first, her behavior soon mellowed and she was able to function somewhat within the village, doing basic domestic tasks like carrying things, grinding corn and such.

Zana had an unusually strong tolerance for cold, could consume raw meat and even spoiled food with no apparant signs of illness. She would leave rooms when they were heated, preferring the ice cold outside. Zana was studied, briefly, after which she was neglected. In spite of her fearsome strength and inability to talk, she gave birth to several children — she may have been raped, no details of the father(s) is known. The first baby the giant wild woman gave birth to, she tried to wash in an ice cold river… it died shortly after. Subsequent babies were taken in by other families after birth, and survived.

The first picture in this answer, a collage, shows a photograph in black and white of a man named “Khwit”, who was one of Zana’s sons. Zana died in 1890… her skull and that of Khwit were later studied and their shape was rather unusual for a modern humanoid. Two grandsons of Zana became miners and were known for their unusual physical strength. All were remarkably tall and hairy.

We may never know exactly who, or what, Zana was. Was she the last member of a group of hunter-gatherers? Was she a mentally ill feral person who suffered from a hormonal disorder? Was she a different species of mankind, a mythological creature, or just a really tall and strong woman who was abandoned to the wild as a child? So many questions. So few answers.