When hundreds and thousands of years ago the first travelers went to other countries, upon their return, they often talked about the unusual peoples living there.
Most often these were people with unusual physical defects and they sincerely believed in their existence even in the Middle Ages, when people already swam in full force on the oceans and learned about real alien races and tribes.
Of course, later historians were not able to find any confirmation of the existence of the peoples described below and it remains only to guess what the travelers actually saw, because of what they had such bizarre descriptions.
10. Blemmias. Headless people of Africa
In the 5th century BC in the east of Libya, people lived without heads on their shoulders. Their eyes, nose, and lips were instead located in the upper chest.
The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about them and noted that the Libyans themselves told him about them. However, he was not the first and not the last who reported about headless people. Several hundred years after Herodotus, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder also wrote about blemias and insisted that they were real.
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He gave them the name Blemiya and described that they were a nomadic people who moved from Libya to Ethiopia. And in addition to the nomadic way of life, the Blemies in his description were generally primitive savages.
In the 1200s AD, the explorer Ferses claimed that he personally met headless people in Ethiopia with eyes and mouths on their chests. At the same time, he called them giants, whose height was almost 4 meters. And a hundred years after Fermes, another scientist, John Mandeville, also stated that he had seen the Blemies.
What is most surprising is that even in the 17th century there was someone who met this tribe. A certain Sir Walter Raleigh of Britain insisted that they were perfectly real.
9. Calistria: A dog-headed tribe from India
The Greek physician Ctesias went to India in the 5th century BC and returned from there with a bunch of incredible stories. Including, according to him, in the Indian mountains, he met a tribe of people called Kalistria, who instead of human heads had the heads of dogs on their human bodies.
“They did not even speak humanly, but barked like dogs,” wrote Ctesias. He also noted that the dog-headed people understood the speech of other Indian tribes perfectly, but answered them only with barking or gestures. Moreover, it was not a small tribe, but about 120 thousand people.
200 years after Ctesias, a merchant named Megasthenes went to India and he also met the Calistrias there. He stubbornly insisted that this tribe was completely real.
Later, travelers from India itself and traders from China wrote about dog-headed people, and in their manuscripts Kalistria lived in the mountains of Tibet and bore the name of Supan.
Several centuries later, the famous traveler Marco Polo also saw people in India who looked like dogheads. They lived on the island of Angamanian. “I assure that all the inhabitants of Angamanian Island have dog heads,” Polo wrote.
8. People with umbrella legs
The same Ctesias met in India not only dog-headed people, but also people called Skyopods. They had only one leg, but with a huge foot. And with this foot they could hide from the rain or the scorching sun like an umbrella.
The skiopods, of course, could not walk, but they jumped well over a long distance and could jump especially high up, jumping over the head of another person.
Descriptions of skiopods look especially surreal and even ridiculous, however, Archbishop Isidore of Seville believed in the existence of one-legged, and this is already the 7th century AD.
When the first maps of the world began to be drawn, images of skiopods were always placed on them, and the philosopher Saint Augustine even wrote a large treatise about them.
7. Panotti: People with huge ears
Somewhere in Scythia on an island lived a tribe, which Pliny the elder called the word Panotti. And these people had huge ears hanging down.
They were so big. that people in them wrapped themselves in blankets or cloaks and did not need any more clothes.
This could be taken for a fantasy of Pliny the Elder himself, but one of his contemporaries Pomponius Mela assured that his words were true.
Only in one thing Pliny the pier was wrong, the panotti lived not in Scythia, but on the Orkney Islands (Scotland).
At the same time, according to Mel, next to the panotti on the same islands lived another strange tribe of Hippopods, which had horse hooves on their feet.
6. Fusan - the kingdom of women
In 500 BC, the Chinese traveler Hui Sheng set out on an ocean voyage east of China and returned with amazing stories.
In one of them, he swam to a place called Fusan, which, according to his orientations, should be located somewhere in the area of modern … San Francisco or even Mexico.
In this place, he found a whole kingdom of women, who at the same time reproduce well without the participation of men. These women are beautiful, although their bodies are covered from head to toe with hair.
When they want a child, they go to shallow water and stand there for a while. A few months later, their belly begins to grow and then a baby is born.
They feed their children through nipples placed somewhere in the area of the hairy neck.
The whole description looked as if Hui Sheng was not sailing the seas, but sitting somewhere and smoking opium. However, the Indian astronomer Varahamihira later also described this kingdom of women. Although he placed it in a completely different place - not in the ocean, but in Tibet, not far from dog-headed people.
5. Arimaspi - One-eyed people from Scythia
In the northern regions of Scythia in the snow-capped Riphean mountains lived the one-eyed people of Arimaspi. And it was they who were responsible for the fact that Scythia was so rich in gold.
According to Herodotus, the Arimaspi were engaged in stealing gold from griffins, they were the only ones who dared to attack griffins, while other tribes were very afraid of them. The griffins, in turn, were fascinated by gold and, having found a golden place, sat there and did not let anyone there.
It is curious that some historians believe that with all this, the Arimaspi could be a very real tribe and there was simply a confusion with the names. There was an Aryan tribe with the name Arimaspoi, which was translated as "One-Eyed", and the rest was already completed by human fantasy.
4. Abarimon - People with twisted legs
When Alexander the Great moved east and hired a man named Byton to scout the situation ahead in India, Byton looked into the Himalayas, where he met with the Abarimon tribe.
According to Byton's stories, the abarimons had legs twisted back, while with the help of such legs they moved unusually fast and could even overtake wild animals.
Byton took several abarimons with him, but when he almost brought them to Greece, they suddenly began to choke, it turns out that the local air did not suit them at all. So they came back.
This certainly sounds like pure invention, but in addition to Byton, these people were seen by the already mentioned traveler Megasthenes. True, he called them Nulu and added that they had 8 toes on their feet.
3. Mahli - a tribe of hermaphrodites
The McHleys lived somewhere in Ethiopia, both Greeks and Romans wrote about them and described each as both male and female. For the first time the Greeks wrote about them and at first it was not mentioned that they were hermaphrodites, they were described as rude women. Herodotus wrote about them that they worshiped the woman-goddess of war and organized massacres with sticks and stones in her honor.
Later, Aristotle wrote that one side of their body was male, and a female breast grew on the other. Some time later, the Roman writer Kallifanes for the first time directly reported that they were hermaphrodites.
The same Kallifanes wrote that they had both male and female genitals and they worked equally well - they could alternately have children as a man and as a woman.
2. Astomi - people who do not eat or drink
Let's go back to the colorful descriptions of the Greek traveler Megasthenes who traveled through India. In one place he met the Astomi tribe, who were very hairy and had no mouths at all.
Astomi did not eat or drink anything, and got food through smells. They constantly looked for strong-smelling roots and plants and inhaled their scent for nutrition. Moreover, they were very susceptible to any strong odors and a very unpleasant smell could simply kill them on the spot.
Medieval scholars also believed in the existence of Astomi, while pointing out. that they lived somewhere on the banks of the Ganges. John Mandeville best described them and added details that Megasthenes did not describe.
According to Mandeville, the Astomi were very small in stature and they still had a mouth, but very tiny, so that something could only be drunk through a straw. They said they could not, so they communicated through various hiss.
1. Goat people
Greek and Roman writers wrote a lot about satyrs, half-humans, half-goats, especially often they figured in myths about the biography of gods and deities. At the same time, these creatures lived in reality and many people met them personally.
The Greek writers Herodotus and Xenophon both claimed to have seen real satyrs in the city by the Meander River (Turkey). And Pliny the Elder saw satyrs in Ethiopia. Several more Romans reported that they saw satyrs in the same Ethiopia, who were put on public display as a curiosity.
The Greek geographer Pausanias, who lived in the 2nd century AD, said that he saw in Libya how Roman soldiers captured one satyr and took him to Rome to show to the emperor. Plutarch claimed to have seen a satyr in the area of modern Albania. The Roman legionary Sulla said that he personally caught the satyr while he was sleeping under a tree.
In the 4th century AD, satyrs were already written about in the past tense, it was believed that they were all extinct, while their dead and mummified bodies could still be seen here and there. Saint Jerome claimed that he saw the body of a satyr, which was perfectly preserved, being covered with salt.
