ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

Mermaids: Beautiful Aquatic Creatures or Myth?

Updated on November 2, 2015
Source

Everyone has heard about mermaids at some point in their lives. Whether it was through Disney's The Little Mermaid, or whether it was seen through reports about it on the news. Maybe you got sucked in by your own curiosity of what could actually live in the oceans, but some of the folklore for these aquatic humanoids tell a different story than what Hans Christian Andersen wrote about.

So What Is A Mermaid?

A mermaid, or a merman, is an aquatic creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish. Their folklore stretches through many cultures throughout the world, to include Near East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Mermaids are usually depicted with beautiful, long flowing hair and are curious about human beings; mermen, on the other hand, have been described as wilder and uglier with little interest in humans. Mermaids have also been associated with the sirens from Greek mythology.

The Folklore

Assyria

The first known tales about mermaids go back to around 1000 B.C., coming out of Assyria. As the folklore has it, the goddess Atargatis, who was the mother of the Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed of her actions, she jumped into a lake and took the form of a fish. However, the waters could not conceal her divine beauty, it was then she took the form of a mermaid. The earliest representation of her shows her with the body of a fish and only a human head and arm. It wasn't until later that mermaids were transformed to how we see them today.

Ancient Greece

The Greeks also had a similar myth, but instead of Atargatis, she was named Derketo. To add on to the legend, they believed that Alexander the Great's sister, Thessalonike, turned into a mermaid after her death. When she came up a ship, she would ask the sailors if King Alexander was still alive. If the sailor's answer pleased her, she would calm the waters and bid the ship farewell; if their answer enraged her, she would stir up a terrible storm, dooming the ship and every sailor that was on board.

British Isles

The British Isles are the owners of the earliest artistic depiction of a mermaid, on a stone pillar in the Norman Chapel. This depiction dates to around 1078 A.D. In the British folklore, mermaids carried unlucky omens, foretelling disaster and provoking it. They were also a sign of approaching rough weather out on the seas, and some have been described as monstrous in size, measuring up to 2000 feet. The British claim that mermaids had the ability to swim up rivers to the freshwater lakes. Every so often, mermaids would aid humans by teaching them cures for certain diseases.

Western Europe

Western Europeans believed that there was a freshwater mermaid. They called her Melusine and she was sometimes shown to have two fish tails, and sometimes had the lower body of a serpent. The fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" also came out of this region when Hans Christian Andersen inked it in 1837. His story ends much differently than the Disney version, where the mermaid is transformed into a daughter of the air.

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe's different areas had different stories about mermaids, but they all had a common element, that being that mermaids were the restless spirits of the unclean dead. Young women became mermaids when they died a violent or untimely death, perhaps by murder or suicide, before their wedding and especially by drowning. They also believed that mermaids inhabited lakes and rivers. The Slavic counterpart to the Greek's siren was named Rusalkas.

Sightings

There have been numerous sightings of mermaids throughout the years, below are just some of them.

  • Christopher Columbus reported seeing them while exploring the Caribbean.
  • Blackbeard, the English pirate, wrote in his logbook that he instructed his crew on several voyages to avoid waters that he had charted as "enchanted" for fear of mermaids. Blackbeard and his crew had reported seeing mermaids while out on the water.
  • Two sightings were reported in Canada, one near Vancouver sometime between 1870 and 1890, and the other one near Victoria in 1967.
  • In August 2009, dozens of people reported seeing a mermaid leaping out of the water and doing aerial tricks off the coast Kiryat Yam in Israel. The government put out a one million dollar reward for the capture of the mermaid, but no one has seen it since.
  • In February 2012, work on two reservoirs near Gokwe and Mutare in Zimbabwe stopped when workers refused to continue, stating that mermaids had hounded them away from the sites.

The hand of the mermaid from Animal Planet's docu-fiction Mermaids: The New Evidence.
The hand of the mermaid from Animal Planet's docu-fiction Mermaids: The New Evidence. | Source

Animal Planet Pulls A Fast One

In May 2012, the Animal Planet aired a docu-fiction called "Mermaids: The Body Found". It centered around the experiences of numerous former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists. The docu-fiction showed a CGI recreation of amateur sound and video of a beached mermaid. They also discussed scientific theories involving the existence of mermaids.

A month later, the National Ocean Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, released a statement because of all the public inquiries and the possibility that some viewers may have mistaken the progam as a legitimate documentary. In the statement they declared that no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.

Almost exactly a year later, the Animal Planet aired another docu-fiction entitled "Mermaids: The New Evidence". The program featured previously unreleased video evidence of what a former Iceland geosurvey scientist witnessed while diving off the coast of Greenland. While underwater, they showed two different shots of what appears to be a humanoid creature approaching and touching the submersible.

The NOAA once again released a statement saying that the person identified as a NOAA scientist was actually and actor. They also repeated that there is no evidence of aquatic humanoids ever being recorded.

Source

Sirenomelia

Sirenomelia, also known as mermaid syndrome, is a congenital disorder where a child is born with his or her legs are fused together. The condition is about as rare as conjoined twins, affecting one out of every 100,000 live births. Sirenomelia is usually fatal within a day or two of birth because the kidneys and bladder do not develop properly.

A woman from Clearwater, Florida by the name of Tiffany Yorks is the longest living survivor of the condition. Born on May 7, 1988, she underwent a successful surgery to separate her legs before she was one year old. While her legs are still weak, she lives a very productive life.

Source

The Best Explanation

It is widely believed that most of the mermaid sightings can be explained away as mistaking what we know as Sirenia, or sea cows. The two most common types are dugong and manatees. It would be easy to confuse these creatures from a distance as a mermaid. They have two forelimbs that could easily be mistaken as arms and they have the same tail that mermaids are claimed to have. So, it is believed that they are misidentified as mermaids when they come up for air.

The Conclusion

I think it is pretty easy to dismiss the idea of mermaids being a real creature. Either all the sightings can be explained away or they are one time events that are probably made up by someone trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame. There just isn't any evidence, there are no fossils, no quality photographs or videos. At the end of the day, the myth of mermaids was just a way for our ancestors to explain why storms would suddenly appear out on the seas and sink ships, or why someone drowned in a local lake or river.

Do you believe in mermaids?

See results

© 2015 Kingsniz

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)