A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria, in which the goddess Atargatistransformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally killing her human lover.
Some of the attributes of mermaids may have been influenced by the Sirens of Greek mythology. Historical accounts of mermaids, such as those reported by Christopher Columbus during his exploration of the Caribbean, may have been inspired by manatees and similar aquatic mammals. While there is no evidence that mermaids exist outside of folklore, reports of mermaid sightings continue to the present day, including 21st century examples from Israel and Zimbabwe.
Due to their vaguely anthropomorphic shape, dried skates have long been described as mermaids. Often their appearance is deliberately modified to make them look even more human. In Europe, dried skates, sometimes called devil fish, were displayed as mermaids, angels, demons, or basilisks.
In 1493, sailing off the coast of Hispaniola, Columbus reported seeing three "female forms" which "rose high out of the sea, but were not as beautiful as they are represented".
Two sightings were reported in Canada near Vancouver andVictoria, one from sometime between 1870 and 1890, the other from 1967.[54][55] A Pennsylvania fisherman reported five sightings of a mermaid in the Susquehanna River nearMarietta in June 1881.In August 2009, after dozens of people reported seeing a mermaid leaping out of Haifa Baywaters and doing aerial tricks, the Israeli coastal town of Kiryat Yam. In February 2012, work on two reservoirs near Gokwe and Mutare in Zimbabwe stopped when workers refused to continue, stating that mermaids had hounded them away from the sites. It was reported by Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, the water resources minister.
The National Ocean Service (a branch of NOAA) has declared that "no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found".
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The mermaid of
the Phra Aphai Mani legend in Songkhla,
Thailand (2006)
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Havfrue, by Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann (1873)
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| Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom by Ilya Repin |
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Raymond walks in on his wife, Melusine, in her bath,
finding she has the lower body of a serpent. Jean d'Arras, Le
livre de Mélusine, 1478.
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| A dried skate, or Jenny Haniver. Mashhad Museum, Iran |
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Picture Source: Collected from Internet
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