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> I was a bit surprised that a twelfth century source would refer to apes. The Roman empire extended into North Africa and they would absolutely have been awar
by KineticLensman 3y ago
> I was a bit surprised that a twelfth century source would refer to apes.
The Roman empire extended into North Africa and they would absolutely have been aware of the wildlife. Hannibal actually launched an attack on the Romans that involved bringing war elephants across the Alps [0]. Subsequent readers of Roman authors would have known about the animals the Romans knew about, e.g. [1], which in turn made their way into medieval bestiaries (along with unicorns and a few others).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal%27s_crossing_of_the_Alps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal%27s_crossing_of_the_A...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiologus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiologus
- School-Cotton 3y agoThere are no apes in North Africa, though, unless your definition of “North” is quite expansive.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoOr your definition of "ape" includes macaques, which a twelfth century definition very possibly would.
- bloak 3y agoDefinitely. According to the OED, "ape" included monkeys before the word "monkey" was introduced in the 16th century, and even after that any primate without a tail was an "ape", including the "Barbary ape", as it is still often called.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoThe inhabitants of North Africa may have been familiar to some degree and had some contact with subsaharan Africa.
- ffhhttt 3y agoThere are Carthaginian records of an expedition to Subsaharan Africa where they encountered fury human like creatures which they called the “Gorillai”. The name was reused in the 1800s, of course we don’t know it was actual gorillas that they encountered might have been other great apes. Also there is no evidence this was a regular occurrence. Getting over the Sahara is extremely hard and ancient ships weren’t really fit for this type of journey due to the prevailing winds (some scientists today still doubt that Hanno the Navigator could have sailed further than West Sahara despite the written evidence..). Anyway.. it’s extremely unlikely they were in direct contact and good luck getting any great apes across the desert. Also even if they did Carthaginian culture (and pretty much all written records) was pretty exterminated by the Romans.