Prologue

In the fifth century BC the Carthaginian admiral Hanno was commissioned to sail down the west coast of Africa and found Carthaginian colonies. After dropping off colonists at intervals, he sailed on, and eventually came to a fiery mountain, near which was a bay in which was an island. In the island was a lake, and within this another island, full of savage hairy people whom the interpreters called “gorillas”. The Carthaginians tried to catch them; the men escaped and threw stones from the cliffs; but they caught three women and, finding them untameable, killed them, skinned them and took their skins back to Carthage.

Hanno's voyage has been endlessly discussed: did he get to Cameroon? – to Sierra Leone? – just to southern Morocco? Were they really gorillas? – or chimpanzees? – or baboons? – or even Neandertalers? What language was this word “gorillas”, and who were these interpreters?

Heuvelmans (1981) was the first to point out what should have been obvious: the account of the voyage which has come down to us is in Greek, not Punic (the language of Carthage), and it was written some centuries after the voyage was said to have taken place. In the interval, who knows how much it has been embellished, abbreviated, and perhaps modified to accord with various accounts of Greek, Phoenician and Egyptian ocean voyages? There seems little hope of ever establishing what those so mercilessly slaughtered “gorillas” actually were, or where they lived.