ANTHROPOID APES DISCOVERED BY CARTHAGINIAN NAVIGATORS[BJ]
The Periplus of Hanno purports to be a Greek translation of a Carthaginian inscription on a tablet in the "temple of Chronos" (Moloch) at Carthage, dedicated by Hanno, a Carthaginian navigator, in commemoration of a voyage which he made southward from the Strait of Gibraltar along the western coast of Africa as far as the inlet now known as Sherboro Sound, the next opening beyond Sierra Leone.
Hanno is a very common Carthaginian name, but recent writers think it not improbable that this Hanno was either the father or the son of that Hamilcar who led the great Carthaginian expedition to Sicily in 480 B. C. In the former case the Periplus might be assigned to a date about 520 B. C.; in the latter, some fifty years later.
The narrative was certainly extant at an early period, for it is cited in the work on Marvellous Narratives ascribed to Aristotle, which belongs to the third century B. C., and Pliny also expressly refers to it. The authenticity of the work is now generally conceded.
According to the narrative the farthest limit of Hanno's voyage, which was undertaken for purposes of colonization, brought him and his companions to an island containing a lake with another island in it which was full of wild men and women with hairy bodies, called by the interpreters gorillas. The Carthaginians were unable to catch any of the men but they caught three of the women, whom they killed, and brought their skins back with them to Carthage. "Pliny, indeed, adds that the skins in question were dedicated by Hanno in the temple of Juno at Carthage, and continued to be visible there till the destruction of the city. There can be no difficulty in supposing these 'wild men and women' to have been really large apes of the family of the chimpanzee, or pongo, several species of which are in fact found wild in western Africa, and some of them, as is now well known, attain a stature fully equal to that of man."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A
Agassiz, L.