Ancient Evidence for the Nittaewo cryptid

 

That the Nittaewo did once exist is almost beyond doubt, but nobody is entirely certain whether they still exist or not. Nor can it be stated with any absolute certainty just what sort of a creature this is (or was). Perhaps the Nittaewo is an unknown form of ape, or it may be a strange form of human, or perhaps it is some sort of half-way house between human and ape - the "ape-man" of this book's title.

Before trying to come to conclusions about this elusive character, it is best to look at the evidence and then see where that evidence points.

The first reference to these creatures comes in the work of the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, who wrote an encyclopedia in 37 books in about ad70. Writing about India Pliny records "Certain Indian men have mated with apes or monkeys, and have produced certain monstrous mongrels that are half-beast and half-man". The account is clearly fanciful, but it is worth noting a few things about this reference before it is dismissed out of hand.

For a start, "India" was a rather vague place for the Ancient Romans. Basically anything very far to the east that was not in the north might be termed "India". Pliny might have been talking about what we now call Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Burma or Sri Lanka. Secondly, Pliny was taking his information about India from an older book written by the Greek diplomat Megasthenes. In about 300bc, Megasthenes went to what is now Patna in northern India to serve as the ambassador of the Greek ruler Seleucus I who ruled what is now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and neighbouring regions. On his return Megasthenes wrote a book called simply "India" in which he recorded everything he had seen or heard about in India. That book has since been lost so we do not know exactly what it was that Megasthenes said about the "beast-men", we only have Pliny's abridged version.

Battuta did not see these monkey-men himself, but he was in no doubt that they existed. He does not give a physical description of the creatures, but his account of their behaviour clearly marks them out as having a far more sophisticated social structure and levels of intelligence than the average monkey or ape. At the same time the locals in Sri Lanka clearly thought of the monkey-men as not being fully human. The only physical fact that can be deduced is that they must have had luxuriant hair if pulling it out was a punishment.