The Kentucky mermaid turned out to be a stuffed animal made from a monkey, a crocodile and a fish.
In the news you can often find references to mermaids – and we are not talking about mythical creatures, but about very real museum exhibits or finds on the seashore that scientists study. In both cases, there is nothing supernatural about mermaids, but this does not make them any less interesting. Lenta.ru found out why the Japanese eat mermaid scales, why Columbus called these creatures “masculine” and who actually owned the mermaid bones from the 13th century temple.
In the United States, a CT scan of the remains of a sea maiden from a museum in Kentucky was carried out
Recently, radiologists at Northern Kentucky University performed a CT scan of the remains of a Fijian sea maiden that had been kept in a museum for more than a century. The mermaid’s former owner donated her to the Clark County Historical Society in 1906. According to him, the curiosity was bought either in Japan or in Indonesia.
This part of the story is confirmed by archival records: at the end of the 19th century, he actually served in the American navy and could well have visited other countries. However, the surviving documents did not explain why the sailor decided to buy this creature and what it was. Tomography was required in order to get answers to at least some of these questions.
Even before the start of the study, experts had little doubt that they were dealing with a hoax
In the 19th century, similar stuffed mermaids were often shown in cabinets of curiosities and at fairs. Even the famous showman Phineas Barnum bought one of the Fijian sea maidens. An impressive adventurous story is associated with it, the end of which still haunts historians.
To get a mermaid from Japan, an American captain committed a crime
Barnum’s Fiji Sea Maid was a fake, but the showman himself had nothing to do with it. It was sewn by a simple Japanese fisherman: he took the top from a monkey and attached a fish tail to the bottom. Most likely, this happened at the very beginning of the 19th century – Barnum was not yet born.
First, the fisherman showed his craft to his fellow villagers and assured that he personally caught it with his net. The mermaid, according to him, managed to warn about the terrible epidemic that was approaching Japan. The disease will make people infertile, and the only salvation is portraits of a mermaid, which the fisherman willingly sold to everyone.
A few years later, the mermaid was bought by the American captain Samuel Barrett Eades. He paid six thousand dollars for it – at that time it was a very significant sum
Eades did not have that kind of money, so he borrowed what was missing from the ship’s cash register. The captain hoped that he would earn even more money from the mermaid if he showed her for money during stops at ports.
In 1822, the only court meeting in history took place at which the fate of the mermaid was decided.
Eades managed to hide the arrears until 1822. When he tried to display the mermaid in London, the ship’s owners caught wind of her. They sued Ides, accusing him of embezzlement. The litigation ended with the captain being ordered to work for free until he returned all the money.
Later, the mermaid was inherited by the son of Ides, and he received nothing but her. But he managed to benefit even from this: in 1842 he sold it to the Boston Museum for five thousand dollars. There Barnum looked after her. He decided to get her into his exhibition at all costs and, for the sake of authority, even invited a naturalist. Without even looking, he called the mermaid a hoax, but that didn’t stop the showman.
In 1843, the mermaid was exhibited at Barnum’s museum for several months, after which she disappeared without a trace.
The Fijian sea maiden housed at the Clark County Historical Society likely had a similar history. CT scan confirmedthat it was stitched together from body parts of at least three different animals.
An unknown master took the head and body of a monkey, borrowed the tail from a large fish, and created the arms from the paws of a crocodile or alligator. A more accurate answer will be given by experts from the Cincinnati Zoo and the Newport Aquarium, who will study the images.
Mermaid mummies prayed at a Japanese temple to stop the coronavirus pandemic
The Japanese origin of many sea maidens is no coincidence. The remains of these creatures in Japan have long been attributed healing properties. Some people still believe in them today.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Enjuin Temple in the Japanese city of Asakuchi held a religious ceremony in front of the mummy of another mermaid. “We worshiped her in the hope that she would at least slightly ease the coronavirus epidemic,” the abbot explained to reporters.
It is believed that if you eat the flesh of a mermaid, you will never die. In many parts of Japan there is a legend about a woman who accidentally ate the flesh of a mermaid and lived to be 800 years old.
The mummy from Asakuchi looked much more impressive than Barnum’s sea maiden. She has a believable human face with hair, a fish tail, and many sharp teeth. In the temple believedthat this creature was caught off the coast of Shikoku between 1736 and 1741. The fisherman who caught her allegedly mistook the mermaid for an outlandish fish, took her to Osaka and sold her. They came up with the idea of praying to her later.
To prolong life, in Japan they ate mermaid scales and drank a tincture of their bones.
Another Japanese mermaid is even older. It is believed that her thrown away ashore on the island of Kyushu on April 14, 1222. The local shaman declared this a good sign and ordered the mermaid to be buried in the Ukimido temple. The bones lay there until the Edo period, when power in Japan passed to the Tokugawa clan. They dug up the bones and began to make healing tinctures on them. Only six bones have survived to this day, which are kept in the Ryuguji Temple in Fukuoka.
The authenticity of these bones, and especially the mummies from Asakuchi, raises serious doubts among experts
In 2022, researchers from Kurashiki University scanned mummy using a CT scanner and came to the conclusion that it was made of paper, cotton, plaster and other artificial materials. And not in the 18th century, as the rector of the temple believed, and not earlier than the 1880s.
With bones from the Ryuguji Temple in Fukuoka, the situation is even more complicated. Biologists do not rule out that they belong to some kind of marine animal, which can easily be confused with a mermaid, for example, a finless porpoise or a dugong, brought by the waves.
In 1493, Christopher Columbus confused manatees with mermaids.
It was the dugong, according to several experts, that belonged to the remains spotted at the end of September on the shore of Simberi Island in Papua New Guinea. The tabloids immediately dubbed this discovery a mermaid. There really are some similarities, but even professionals could not offer more accurate guesses.
The carcass from Papua New Guinea was missing its head and some other body parts. Judging by photographs taken by eyewitnesses, its length was twice the height of a person. Accurate identification of the animal to which the remains could belong was made difficult by their severe decomposition.
The guess about dugongs, expressed by marine biologists, suggested itself. This is a marine mammal that resembles a large manatee, with which it, however, has little in common. Its closest relatives are, oddly enough, elephants. Even their name, which is often believed to mean “sea maiden,” hints at the resemblance of these dugongs to mermaids.
How easy it is to confuse such animals with mythical creatures is confirmed by the records of the Spanish navigator Christopher Columbus. In 1493, he seriously complained in his diary about the unattractive appearance of the mermaids seen in Haiti.
When the admiral arrived at Rio del Oro, he said that he clearly saw three mermaids rising from the depths of the sea. However, they were not as beautiful as they say, since their faces had some masculine features
Modern researchers agree that Columbus actually saw manatees. In this case, even skillful hoaxes were not needed to be deceived.
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