The Mystery of the Fishmen
Mythology is full of "hybrid" creatures: just think of the centaurs, partly human and partly equine, or the Egyptian gods with the human body and the head of a falcon, jackal and so on. But there is also another singular figure, that of the fish man. According to what the myths tell us, the fish men would have had an important function in civilization development, to then return to the place from which they came, the depths of the sea.
But who were these fish man? Did they really exist? We will try to find out by retracing the mythological tales, examining some modern "sightings" of these beings and finally trying to provide a possible scientific explanation.
Contents
- Oannes and his colleagues
- Fish-men and humanized fish
- A possible scientific explanation
Oannes and his colleagues
Oannes is the Man Fish par excellence: in Sumerian-Babylonian mythology, he is the one who transmitted civilization to men. His deeds are narrated in the History of Babylon by Berossus, a Chaldean priest and astronomer who lived between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. The original work has been lost, but some fragments arrived to us through quotations from other authors. So let's read what Berossus says about this strange being.
Oannes emerged from the Erythraean Sea (the Persian Gulf) at a place near Babylon, in the “first year” (probably of the first antediluvian ruler): “His whole body was that of a fish, but a man's head had grown under to that of fish and human-like feet under the fish tail. He also had a human-like voice. […] He spent his days with men, but did not take food. He gave men the knowledge of letters, sciences and arts of all kinds. He also taught them to found cities, build temples, introduce laws and measure the land. He also revealed how to sow and reap fruit, and generally gave to man all that pertains to civilized life."
But Oannes was not the only fishman to visit the populations of the Fertile Crescent: in addition to him, Berossus mentions six others (Annedotus, Euedocus, Eneugamus, Eneubulus, Anemento and Odakon), who would have joined other antediluvian rulers.
According to Berossus, the antediluvian period lasted for a good 432,000 years, it is probable that the periodic return of the fishmen served to "refresh the memory" of the population (perhaps following natural catastrophes, which certainly will not have such a long time).
The figure of the fish man is also found in many other mythologies: the Philistines, for example, worshiped the god Dagon, represented as a man with the lower part of his body like that of a fish. The Dogon of Mali venerate the Nommo, fish-like spirits. In Indian mythology the first avatar of Vishnu, Matsya, is depicted as a fish or as part man and part fish. The Aztecs claimed that four more had followed one another before the present age; by the end of the fourth, the men had been swept away by a flood and had turned into fish. And we could go on and on…
Also in the Stanzas of Dzyan fish-men are present:
“[the Earth] begat from her own womb. She gave birth to the Water Men, terrible and evil. The Water Men, terrible and evil, were created from the remains of other [living beings]" (Anthropogenesis , II, 1-2). Later these beings were destroyed together with other monstrous creatures (also mentioned by Berossus): “The flames came. Fires with Sparks. The Night Fires and the Day Fires. They dried up the murky and dark waters. With their heat they extinguished them. The Lhas from above, the Lhamayin from below, came. They slaughtered the forms that were double- and quadruple-faced. The Goat-Men fought, the Dog-headed Men, and those with the body of fish” (Anthropogenesis, II, 4).
There is no lack of representations of creatures halfway between man and fish in some stones of Ica.
In short, the mentions of the fish men are far too many to be ignored; furthermore, as we will see in a moment, they are not limited to mythology…
Fish-men and humanized fish
Not only ancient sources report of fish-men: similar beings have also been sighted in recent times. This page (http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/ET/oceanichumanoids.html) collects some testimonials about it; even if it is not possible to verify its authenticity, in my opinion it is worth mentioning it.
One of these testimonies concerns an event that occurred in 1969 on the island of Antigua, in the Caribbean. To report what happened is a soldier, who along with some friends was by the sea to fish. After dark, they noticed a group of locals on the beach some distance away who had lit a bonfire. What seemed like a simple meeting between friends, however, turned out to be a real religious ceremony: the locals in fact sacrificed a chicken, pouring its blood into a wooden cup. Subsequently the celebrant went with the cup towards the sea and… a fish man appeared from the water !
According to the description given, the creature was over six feet tall and had a row of bony plates along its back. His head was tapered and webbed feet. Once out of the water, the fish man went towards the celebrant, took the cup, drank its contents and gave it back to him. Then he turned and walked back into the water, disappearing into the waves.
Other sightings of "watermen" are from the Caspian Sea region. A testimony, published in an Iranian newspaper, dates back to 2005 concerning a creature similar to a fish, but equipped with human arms and hair. Shortly after publication, many people wrote to the newspaper stating that they had sighted a similar being, the so-called "man of the sea". According to eyewitnesses, the creature measured about 165 cm in length, had a robust build, black/green hair and large, round eyes. The mouth was quite large; the upper jaw was protruding, while the chin was absent. He also had webbed hands.
There is also another category of "fishmen": these are human beings born with strange malformations, such as to make them look like "hybrids" between man and fish. Similar malformations were also observed in some fish, which appeared "humanised". On this page (http://www.macroevolution.net/fish-human-hybrids.html) you can find numerous examples of these “hybrids”; we report some testimonials for the benefit of the reader.
The Daily Commonwealth of Topeka (Kansas) of March 24, 1886 reports the news of a 3-year-old boy suffering from severe deformities: "In place of normally developed arms there was a fin like that of a fish, and the strangeness of the fact is that a hind flipper was fully developed and natural as in an aquatic animal. His legs were fully developed up to the ankle joint, where instead of feet they expanded into a paddle-shaped fin, similar to a beaver's tail. As reported in the rest of the article, during the pregnancy the mother of the child, on the occasion of a journey by ship, had been frightened by some sharks; this, according to the parents, was the only thing that could explain their son's appearance.
In the Iowa County Democrat of April 24, 1891, we read an account of a child with skin covered with scales, like that of a fish:
“The scales are dark blue in color and cover the body so completely that not the slightest portion of skin that looks like a human being”
Again, the mother attributed her son's appearance to an event that occurred during her pregnancy: while she was preparing fish for dinner, a blue pike, freshly caught by her husband but still alive, had jumped out of his hands, scaring her. A few weeks later the baby was born, already covered in scales.
Several news report the birth, which took place in April 1894 in Brenham (Texas), of a child with partly human and partly fish-like features:
"The trunk and head are similar to those of a fish, also for the gills, and there are flippers instead of arms, but the legs are normal and well formed”
;
"His upper body, including his head, was a perfect reproduction of a red snapper, while his lower limbs were perfect and normal."
We also see a couple of examples of “humanized” fish.
A possible scientific explanation
And here we are, finally, with a possible scientific explanation. Obviously, we could "explain" everything by stating that fish men never existed: the ancient tales and modern testimonies would only be the result of fantasies or hallucinations. But the official "information" bodies already exist for "explanations" of this type: here we will try a very different approach.
Apparently, human beings and fish are extremely different from each other: taxonomically speaking, they belong to two different classes (respectively mammals and - indeed - fish); the former are terrestrial creatures, while the latter cannot live outside the water; and we could go on listing the innumerable anatomical, physiological, genetic differences… In short, a “mixture” between the two natures appears really impossible.
But is it really so? Is the distance that separates us from aquatic creatures really so enormous and unbridgeable?
In recent years, geneticist Eugene McCarthy has challenged the idea that barriers between species are impassable. On his website http://www.macroevolution.net (from which we have drawn the news mentioned above) he lists a very large number of testimonies, photographs and videos which suggest the possibility of crossbreeding between species that are even very distant from each other (for example between dogs and cows, between catsand chickens , or – precisely – between men and fish). He himself clearly recognizes that only a genetic analysis could demonstrate that an apparently "hybrid" creature is actually the result of a crossing; however, reporting even doubtful cases excludes any bias due to bias.
So could fishmen be the result of an ancient hybridization? Although McCarthy's hypotheses are suggestive, in my opinion their origin could be another. Let us think back to the Aztec myth according to which, following a great flood (the Flood?) men were transformed into fish. We could hypothesize that, to save themselves from the catastrophe, some men decided to modify their anatomy and physiology in order to be suitable for an aquatic environment.
Obviously, this hypothesis is no less daring than that of hybridization: in fact, we should explain how it would have been possible to modify the human organism in such an extreme way. I realize that it is impossible to give a comprehensive explanation; however, in my opinion the key to the enigma lies in the apparent ability of the human fetus to change its appearance following stimuli received from the mother during pregnancy. It is a well-known phenomenon (even without mentioning extreme cases, who has never heard of "cravings"?), but still poorly understood by biology.
And if the ancients, unlike us, had understood and exploited it to their advantage? Let us remember (although it is superfluous to remind the readers of this blog) that in the past there existed civilizations as advanced as and more than ours: the one that produced the stones of Ica, for example, was very advanced in the field of medicine, to the point of performing operations surgical procedures still impossible today (one above all, the brain transplant, however managing to avoid the phenomenon of rejection). A civilization that had wished to produce a lineage of "aquatic men" could have done so by appropriately modifying, through means unknown to us, the appearance of the unborn (or even of the adults, which however would certainly have been less "plastic").
I already know that to many an explanation of this type will not seem "scientific"; if anything science fiction. But the truth is that many events have remained "unexplained" until today precisely because of our prejudices, first of all that myths are only fictional stories. Fortunately, under the hail of evidence, prejudices about myths are starting to crack; however, there are still many more about our biology, which we will have to dismantle so that the truth about our origins will finally be discovered.
Note
This article is an english translation of the italian article "Il Mistero degli Uomini Pesce" by Merlo Bianco. You can find the original article here: https://merlobianco.altervista.org/il-mistero-degli-uomini-pesce/
