Ancient Navigators Series
Continuing with my series on ancient transatlantic voyagers, today's post looks into the story recorded by Pausanias, (143-176 AD), a Greek Geographer and traveler; in his book, Description of Greece.
He mentions a journey by Euphemus of Caria (Caria was a Greek city on the coast of Anatolia, now part of Turkey) who navigated into the Atlantic. Again, like with Sertorius, it is the wind that drives the ships into the Atlantic. It was an accident, not a planned voyage.
Pausanias' text is quoted below (Source, online):
"1.23.5 ... Wishing to know better than most people who the Satyrs are I have inquired from many about this very point. Euphemus the Carian said that on a voyage to Italy he was driven out of his course by winds and was carried into the outer sea, beyond the course of seamen [This Outer Sea is the Atlantic Ocean]. He affirmed that there were many uninhabited islands, while in others lived wild men. The sailors did not wish to put in at the latter,
1.23.6 because, having put in before, they had some experience of the inhabitants, but on this occasion they had no choice in the matter. The islands were called Satyrides by the sailors, and the inhabitants were red haired, and had upon their flanks tails not much smaller than those of horses. As soon as they caught sight of their visitors, they ran down to the ship without uttering a cry and assaulted the women in the ship. At last the sailors in fear cast a foreign woman onto the island. So the Satyrs outraged this woman not only in the usual place but her whole body similarly."
The tailed mentioned in the story, remind me of the "tailed men of Patagonia" and Father Beauvoir's explanation that the natives wore furs of animals whose tails waving as they ran, gave the impression of them having tails. The "red hair" is an interesting fact. Probably these "satyrs" daubed their hair with red ochre making them appear red haired.
The way the satyrs stormed Euphemus' vessel is similar to the descriptions given by those who navigated the Strait of Magellan when they came across the natives. Some examples can be found online. For example (here (see p. 14), an incident took place in 1875 : "Only a short time ago a tribe of Fish Indians, without the least provocation, attacked, when on shore, the master and crew of an American sealing schooner. Fortunately the master was armed with a breach loader with which he fought his way through crowds of natives to the beach, losing, however, two of his men", and (on p. 18), a boarding in 1880 with several sailors killed by the natives.
Captain FitzRoy also tells about the Fuegians mood and behavior in the 1820s-30s: "they appear to be friendly when meeting strangers, but that their subsequent conduct depends entirely upon their relative numbers. They ought never to be trusted, however, as they have hasty tempers, and are extremely revengeful." (Online, see p. 188). He also tells of how they stoned Low's ship, the Adeona, when ordered to leave it (p. 196).
Amerindians or Guanches?
Could these satyrs have been a tribe of Native Americans? The only inhabited land west of Europe was America.
But, as the text mentions islands, there were many unhinhabited islands (Cabo Verde, Bermuda, Azores, Madeira, and some of the Canary Islands, but there were people living on the Canary Islands.
They had a native population originated in Northern Africa, the Guanches, later absorbed by the Spanish influx in the 1400s. I have found an old reference aobut the Guanche mummies with "red hair", but a recent paper published in Nature that analyzed the DNA from Guanches between 200 and 1500 AD suggest a North African genetic root for the Guanches and a colonization date of AD 200. The latter date means that when Euphemus sailed c.1300 BC the islands were uninhabited.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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