The Great Knife-Wielding Ape Hypothesis: Terrain Correspondence and the Archaeological Record Across the Proposed Figure

I propose that a configuration spanning southern, central and eastern Africa represents the transformed remains of a gigantic ape holding a knife and cradling a smaller figure interpreted as a baby. The argument combines proposed anatomical correspondences, measurable terrain relationships and the distribution of hominin remains and stone and bone tools. The preserved registration contains 67 entries at 66 unique positions. An existing archaeological inventory selects 226 ROAD locality records, including 110 with human-remains flags and 164 with lithic flags, alongside a separate 169-record SASSI layer. Published examples include Homo naledi at Rising Star, 3.3-million-year-old stone artifacts at Lomekwi 3, and bone tools at Konso and Olduvai. However, the inventory uses buffered component search regions rather than a validated whole-figure boundary. The paper distinguishes documented finds and measurable terrain relationships from the proposed biological and manufactured identities, which remain unestablished. Status: hypothesis preprint, version 1.1; not peer reviewed. Author: Brett Rosiere. AI assistance is disclosed in the manuscript. Includes the public paper, preserved coordinate register, archaeological data and source attributions, figures and supporting records. This is a separate hypothesis paper linked to the earlier technical report: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22847776. Rights: all rights reserved in the author’s original copyrightable contributions. Third-party and public-domain materials retain their existing terms. ROAD-derived data and Figure 4 retain CC BY-SA 4.0; SASSI source data retain CC BY 4.0. See the included rights and source notices.