Case file · Cryptid
Hanno's hairy 'Gorillai'
The Carthaginian navigator Hanno, sailing down West Africa around 500 BC, reported an island of hairy, savage people his interpreters called 'Gorillai'; three females were killed and their skins taken home.
500 BCE · 7.50, -12.90 · status: account
The account
The men escaped up the rocks, but three women who bit and scratched were captured and killed. The skins were hung in a temple in Carthage and, according to Pliny the Elder, survived until the city fell in 146 BC. In 1847 the name was borrowed for the newly described gorilla.
The sceptical view
The exact location is unknown (suggestions range from Sierra Leone to Cameroon), and the creatures were most likely chimpanzees, baboons or other apes rather than a race of wild humans.