When travelling in distant lands, it is always advisable to bring back some part of a hairy man-like creature to prove that a) you did travel beyond the horizon into strange lands teeming with strange creatures and b) that you did indeed see the hairy evidence that man and animal are only ever separated by a razor.  The first written document of the tradition is the 18 lines scratched in stone temple to the chief god of Carthage, Ba’al Hammon.

In the 5th century, Hanno was ordered to sail west from Carthage with 30,000 men and women in 60 boats each with 50 oars to establish colonies beyond the Pillars of Heracles as the Straights of Gibraltar were known. Having accomplished his task, Hanno then turned his boats south and sailed down along the western coastline of African.

On an island of the coast of present day Gabon lived a hairy tribe of savages, which his interpreters called “Gorillae.” Hanno and his men were unable to ensnare any of the “men” savages, but succeeded in capturing three fierce and furious females, who bit and scratched and refused to come on board. “So we killed and flayed them,” Hanno relates, “and brought their skins to Carthage.  For we did not voyage further, provisions failing us.” So ends Hanno’s narrative. [read more on Hanno's voyage +]

The Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder writing five centuries later noted the gorilla furs had been exhibited in the temple of the goddess Juno "to prove his story and as a curious exhibit." They remained on show until Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in146 B.C. Pliny refers to the creatures as Gorgons and the group of islands they came from as called the Gorgades.

During Charles Waterton’s fourth and final journey through the jungles of Guyana to collect strange and rare specimens, Waterton stumbled upon and procured a great hairy monkey-like animal with a long tail. Being too large to carry whole, Waterton cut off the head and shoulders, preserved them with his superior taxidermy techniques, and brought his “Nondescript” back to England for public display. With his affably affected public schoolboy humour, Waterton proclaim his monkey-thing to be a new species – quite without precedent – and yet, something about “his face and head cause the inspector to pause for a moment, before he ventures to pronounce his opinion of the classification.” That something is its likeness to a human face:

“The features of this animal are quite of the Grecian cast; and he has a placidity of countenance which shows that things went well with him when in life. Some gentlemen of great skill and talent, on inspecting his head, were convinced that the whole series of its features has been changed. Others again have hesitated, and betrayed doubts, not being able to make up their minds, whether it be possible, that the brute features of the monkey can be changed into the noble countenance of man.”

Waterton’s ruse, however, was not to earn praise for his “discovery” a new species, but to laud his prowess at preparing specimens. The confusion and uncertainty that Waterton claims his Nondescript provoked was a sign of his complete mastery of taxidermic preparation so as “to hit the character of an animal to a very great nicety, even to the preservation of the pouting lip, dimples, warts, and wrinkles on the face.”

Waterton offers the possibility that this bust of a monkey-man could indeed be a real creature, although should anyone succeed in bring home another specimen with "features as prefect" as Waterton's specimen, that adventurer would indeed be a modern day Hercules fully entitled to register a thirteenth labour. "Now if, on the other hand, we argue," Waterton continues, "that his head in question has had all its original features destroyed, and a set of new ones given to it, by what means has this hitherto unheard-of-charge been effected?"