Gale - Science and Its Times Vol 01 (2000 BC to AD 699).pdf

hostile inhabitants “who sought to stop us from
landing by hurling stones at us,” and afterward
they passed a river— probably the Senegal—that
was “infested with crocodiles and hippopotami.”
They sailed for 12 days beyond Cerne, during
which time the party observed a coastline
“peopled all the way with Ethiopians.... [whose]
tongue was unintelligible to us and to the Lixites
in our company.” On the twelfth day, they “came
in sight of great, wooded mountains, with varied
and fragrant trees.” This may have been Cape
Verde, or Cape Mesurado near the present-day
Liberian capital of Monrovia; in any case, it is
noteworthy that Hanno seemed to be pointing
out the area’s valuable resources with an eye toward
commerce.
Soon they were in the Gulf of Guinea, where
at night they saw numerous fires along the shore.
At a place Hanno called the Western Horn,
which is perhaps Cape Three Points in modern
Ghana, they “heard the sound of pipes and cymbals
and the rumble of drums and mighty cries.
We were seized with fear, and our interpreters
told us to leave the island.” Still further on,
Hanno’s party saw a volcano he dubbed “Chariot
of the Gods,” which may have been Mount
Cameroun. They sailed on for three days “past
streams of fire” to what he called the Southern
Horn, located either in Gabon or Sierra Leone.
In his final paragraph, Hanno related a
strange incident that took place in the Southern
Horn: “In this gulf was an island ... with a lake,
within which was another island, full of savages.
Most of them were women with hairy bodies,
which our interpreters called Gorillas. Although
we chased them, we could not catch any males:
they all escaped, being good climbers who defended
themselves with stones. However, we caught
three women, who refused to follow those who
carried them off, biting and clawing them. So we
killed and flayed them and brought their skins
back to Carthage. For we did not sail any further,
because our provisions were running short.”
This was the first written reference to the
gorilla, a term that according to Merriam Webster’s
Collegiate Dictionary comes from the Greek
Gorillai—“a tribe of hairy women mentioned in
an account of a voyage around Africa.” The word
itself is apparently a Hellenic version of the
kiKongo term ngò diida, meaning “powerful animal
that beats itself violently”—but therein lies
an intriguing aspect of the Hanno story. Based
on the written account, the voyagers would still
have had to travel much further, crossing the
Equator, to meet speakers of kiKongo.
Thus is raised the question of whether
Hanno actually rounded the southern tip of
Africa, but chose to keep his further discoveries
a secret. Pliny the Elder (c. A.D. 23-79), who
stated that the gorilla furs remained on exhibit at
a Carthaginian temple until the city’s destruction
by the Romans, wrote that “Hanno sailed from
Gades [Cadiz] to the extreme part of Arabia,” in
the process circumnavigating the African continent.
Most likely, however, Hanno actually
turned back when he said he did: though the
matter of the word gorilla’s derivation is a compelling
one, it seems rather less so in light of the
fact that there is no evidence of a Carthaginian
presence in southern or eastern Africa. More important,
the Cape of Good Hope constitutes a
formidable barrier, one that Portuguese mariner
Bartholomeu Dias (c. 1450-1500)—possessing
far more advanced marine technology than that
of the Carthaginians—found impassable.
In any case, Hanno’s account influenced numerous
other writers, among them Herodotus
(c. 484-c. 420 B.C.). According to the Greek historian,
Phoenician traders on the coast of Africa,
probably in the region of modern Senegal,
would land on an island and set a certain
amount of goods on a beach, then return to their
ships. The Africans would then place an amount
of gold, which was plentiful in their area, next to
the Phoenicians’ goods. If the Phoenicians
judged that it was a fair exchange, they would
take the gold and depart. If they did not, however,
they would leave their goods on the shore
until the Africans brought out more gold. Once
they had agreed on an exchange, the Phoenicians
would take their gold and sail away.
Herodotus’s description seems to be drawn
from Hanno’s, and centuries later, Arab journeyers
in the region reported that the Africans still
maintained those trade practices. Carthage and
its colonies, of course, had long since died out,
but Hanno and his voyage remained legendary:
even if he did turn around well on the west side
of Africa, he still traveled further down the
African coast than any sailor prior to the fifteenth
century. In later centuries, writers as diverse
as Montesquieu and Ralph Waldo Emerson
wrote admiringly of Hanno and his exploits.
Further Reading
JUDSON KNIGHT
Books
Cary, M., and E. H. Warmington. The Ancient Explorers.
London: Methuen, 1929.
Exploration
& Discovery
2000 B.C.
to A.D. 699
S C I E N C E A N D I T S T I M E S V O L U M E 1
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