Pangboche Hand

When the yeti died, Sangwa collected the hand and scalp and took them back to the monastery, where they remained as sacred relics, periodically paraded around the village as a fertility ritual, until they were discovered in the modern age.

[2] Oil businessman and adventurer Tom Slick first heard accounts of a "Yeti hand" held as a ritual artifact in the monastery at Pangboche during one of his first "Abominable Snowman" treks in 1957.

In 1959, a member of Slick's expedition that year, Peter Byrne, reportedly stole pieces of the artifact after the monks who owned it refused to allow its removal for study.

[citation needed] During the highly publicized 1960 World Book expedition, which had many goals including gathering intelligence on Chinese rocket launchings, Sir Edmund Hillary and Marlin Perkins took a sidetrip in Nepal to investigate the hand.

[citation needed] In 1991, in conjunction with Coleman's research, it was discovered that the Slick expedition consultant and American anthropologist George Agogino had retained samples of the alleged Yeti hand.

After the broadcast of the program, the entire hand was stolen from the Pangboche monastery, and reportedly disappeared into a private collection via the illegal underground in the sale of antiquities.