Gregory Forth

Gregory Forth is a Canadian anthropologist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Alberta, where he taught from 1986 to 2019. Forth received his DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1980. Forth's work focuses on the peoples of eastern Indonesia (especially the Nagé and Kéo of Flores Island) and spans religion, kinship and marriage, ethnozoology, mythology and metaphor, and human-animal relations. His books include Nagé Birds and Between Ape and Human (2022), the latter presenting his hypothesis that Homo floresiensis may survive on Flores based on indigenous accounts he collected prior to the 2003 fossil discovery.

Education Forth earned his BA in anthropology from Simon Fraser University in 1971. He received his MLitt from the University of Oxford in 1974, followed by his DPhil from Oxford in 1980. His doctoral thesis, titled "Rindi: an ethnographic study of a traditional domain in eastern Sumba", was based on two years of fieldwork among the Rindi people of eastern Sumba and was later published as a book by Martinus Nijhoff in 1981. He is known for his work in ethnobiology (particularly ethnozoology) as well studies of religion, ritual, myth, symbolism, human-animal relations, myth and oral tradition, and the anthropology of time.

In his 2022 book Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid, Forth argues that the diminutive hominin Homo floresiensis could still survive in Indonesia. His hypothesis is based on eyewitness accounts he collected from Flores islanders, particularly from the Lio region in the east-central part of Flores, describing small-bodied, hairy hominoids locally called "lio ho'a" (ape-man). Significantly, Forth began collecting these accounts in the 1980s and 1990s, well before the 2003 discovery of Homo floresiensis fossils, ruling out the possibility that local reports were influenced by news of the archaeological find.

Awards and fellowships Forth has held visiting fellowships and professorships at the Australian National University (1991, 1993, 2011), Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2001), the University of Kent (2005), the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden (2005-2006), and Kyoto University (2015). He held a McCalla Professorship at the University of Alberta in 2004-2005 and received the Research Excellence Award for a full professor in the Faculty of Arts for 2008-2009.

Articles and book chapters

Forth, Gregory. "Blood, milk and coconuts: A study of intracultural ritual variation." Man (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute) 18 no. 4 (1984): 654-68. Forth, Gregory. "Animals, Witches, and Wind: Eastern Indonesian Variations on the" Thunder Complex"." Anthropos(1989): 89-106. Forth, Gregory. "Social and symbolic aspects of the witch among the Nage of eastern Indonesia." In C. W. Watson and R. F. Ellen, eds. Understanding witchcraft and sorcery in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Pp. 99-122. 1993. Forth, Gregory. "Public affairs: institutionalized non-marital sex in an eastern Indonesian society." Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde (Royal Institute, Leiden) 160 (2004): 315-338. Forth, Gregory. "Hominids, hairy hominoids and the science of humanity." Anthropology Today 21, no. 3 (2005): 13-17. Forth, Gregory. "Separating the dead: the ritual transformation of affinal exchange in central Flores." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15, no. 3 (2009): 557-574. Forth, Gregory. "Symbolic classification: Retrospective remarks on an unrecognized invention." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 16 (2010): 707-725. Forth, Gregory. "Cryptids, classification, and categories of cats: An ethnozoological study of unidentified felids from eastern Indonesia." Samantha Hurn, ed. Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Researching Encounters with Mysterious Creatures. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 32-53. 2017. Forth, Gregory. "Elderly People Growing Tails: The Constitution of a Non-empirical Idea." Current Anthropology. 15 (2018):397-414. Forth, Gregory. "Living in Nage, or the Meaning of Life in an Eastern Indonesian Society." Oceania 88 (2018): 168-82. Forth, Gregory. "Are legendary hominoids worth looking for? Views from ethnobiology and palaeoanthropology." Anthropology Today 28, no. 2 (2012): 13-16. Forth, Gregory. "Rites of passage." The international encyclopedia of anthropology (2018): 1-7. Forth, Gregory. "Mountain Turtles and Giant Crabs: Cosmological Implications and Supernatural Understandings of Rare Creatures on an Eastern Indonesian Island." Anthrozoös 35 (2022): 495-513. Forth, Gregory. "Making Fun of Animals: Ontological Implications of Rituals and Taboos Observed in Geographically and Linguistically Discontinuous Regions of Southeast Asia and Southwestern China." Oceania 92 (2022): 267–286. Forth, Gregory. "The Cooked Child: Urban Legends and Ancient Myths from the Malayo-Polynesian-Speaking World." Folklore 134 (2023): 323-343. Forth, Gregory. "What ancient Taiwanese Negritos might tell us about mystery hominoids in Indonesia." Toby Openshaw and Dean Karalekas, eds. Seeking the Koko’ Ta’ay: Investigating the origins of little people myths in Taiwan and beyond, pp. 232-59. Leiden: Brill. 2024 Forth, Gregory. "Local knowledge of Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) in north-central Flores Island (Indonesia) and implications for conservation of the species." Pacific Conservation Biology 31 (2025): 1-15.