ABSTRACT
Fantastic representations of unknown lands, and the people who lived there, could be found throughout the history of Western exploration. The ancient Greeks imagined so-called ‘monstrous races’ (see Figure 4.4) living in faraway places such as India, Ethiopia or Cathay. These races included; the dog-headed people (Cynocephali); those lacking heads (Blemmyae); the one-legged (Sciopods); cannibals (Anthropophagi); Pygmies; and a martial, one-breasted race of women (Amazons). In his Natural History, the Roman writer Pliny effectively transmitted these stereotypes to the Middle Ages and beyond. Burke (2001, 127) suggested that the ‘monstrous races’ may have been invented to illustrate theories of the influence of climate, the assumption that living in places which are too cold or too hot prevented people from being fully human.
