Wonder folks

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
lili rere
Wonder peoples of the Schedel world chronicle
Four-legged and two-headed

The strange peoples and monstrous human races (Latin monstra) of other continents described in antiquity were summarized as wonder peoples , fabulous peoples or monstrous peoples .

Classification in zeitgeist and contemporary history

Sources of knowledge about the Wonder Peoples were among others the Alexander novels , the " Naturalis historia " (77 AD) by Pliny , the "Collectanea rerum memorabilium" ("Collected memorabilia") by Solinus . The most important book on this is the late antique book " Physiologus ". Even in the Middle Ages, the knowledge of the wonder people was accepted without criticism.

The Wonder Races were different from ordinary people in many ways. They are characterized partly by an excess, partly by a lack of arms and legs, heads and eyes as well as by the unusual proportions of individual limbs or their obviously incorrect placement. They have special physical characteristics, such as limbs that are many times larger than those of normal people or those of animals. Wonder races differ from ordinary people in their place of residence, customs, sexual habits or eating habits.

The history of the Wonder Peoples and the belief in their actual existence goes back a long way to ancient times. The wonder peoples are typical evidence of the traditional thinking in the medieval worldview, which did not differentiate between realistic and fabulous descriptions. Reported news has not been subjected to a realistic assessment. However, with the beginning of the Age of Discovery , the story of the Wonder Peoples came to an end.

In more recent studies, the reports about the wonder peoples of the East are also interpreted as an expression of (pre-) racist thinking.

The concept of the monstrous peoples (wonder peoples) was interpreted differently in the Middle Ages than it is today, it was also linked to the miraculous. In contrast to the current term monster , which is exclusively assigned a negative, terrifying or frightening quality. According to Jean Céards, the term monster had three different meanings in ancient times. He designated:

  • Fault of nature
  • omens sent by the gods
  • extraordinary alien races

Representative

The wonder peoples include:

These ideas about strange peoples were derived from ancient mythology, from the mythical creatures of the Orient and from (invented) oriental travel reports, especially Indian ones, and reports by seafarers. Megasthenes described one-eyed (Arimaspen) and mouthless (Astomi), there are similar descriptions of Ktesias of Knidos and Skylax . India in particular, about which little reliable information was available up until the Alexander move, was regarded by the Greeks as a wonderland on the edge of the world. In various ancient works, not only relevant statements but also fable stories were processed with regard to India.

In the world of ideas of antiquity about strange peoples, wonder peoples and mythical-fairytale or mythical-exotic mythical creatures (giants, dwarves, dragons, monsters, monsters) were located at the end of the world . They belonged to the believed reality and were an integral part of the imagination until the Middle Ages. A clear distinction between the variously used animal metaphorical descriptions of the wonderful people, forest people, monsters, sea wonders and monstrous monsters is not always possible.

In the Alexander poetry ( Alexanderroman ) the wonder peoples were given a wide space on Alexander's way to India, they were settled on the way there or in India.

cards

Wonderful people in Africa south of the Nile on the world map of Hereford from around 1280 : one- and four-eyed and headless people with eyes and mouth in their chests

In cartography before and after the time of the great discoveries, such wondrous peoples and mythical creatures were settled in regions that had not yet been mapped, along with exotic animals such as mythical creatures. B. the unicorn . It was not until later that they were not shown in maps and areas that had not yet been explored were shown as white spots .

Numerous representatives of the Wonder Peoples are depicted on the Hereford world map : In Africa there is a leopard and a basilisk in the southwest , a unicorn in Ethiopia and fabulous human races in the south. South of Africa, naked gangines, four-eyed maritimi, headless blemmyae, the psilli, hermaphrodites , mouthless, insole, earless in the east, to the left of them already in Asia, the horned satyrs and the lip-flickers are shown. In Asia one finds a crocodile that is ridden by a man, two dragons on Ceylon, in East India an elephant with a tower on its back, a crane's beak (a person with the face and neck of a crane) with a stick, a pelican that straddles itself rips open a minotaur , griffins fighting pygmies, and two cannibal anthropophages dismembering and devouring human limbs.

On the Ebstorf map of the world , anthropophages, four-eyed and nasal or tongueless people, cynocephali and troglodytes are shown in Africa.

theology

In the Middle Ages, a discussion broke out about the extent to which the various wonder races, hardly described as human, were human. For from the church's point of view it depended on whether the word of God must also be preached to them. If these wonder races were human, they must have descended from Adam and Noah . In the opinion of the church fathers and scholars, these homini monstrosi were ultimately God's work and the gospel had to be brought to them too. Augustine stated that the representatives of these wonderful peoples were “human beings”: “monstra sunt in genere humano” (“monsters are part of the human race”).

The common, biblical-historicizing answer to the question of the derivation of the Wonder Nations came from Cain, whose curse by God had become visible in his descendants in the form of anomalies.

Scandinavia

The Old Norse cosmography lists numerous wonderful peoples who were “known” in Scandinavia from the Stjórn (the Old Testament, which was translated into Old Norwegian in the 14th century). Amongst other things:

  • Man-eater (Anthropophagi; the double people of the Gog and Magog known from the Old Testament )
  • Parents fatteners or parental eater (Patrophagi; are also cannibals)
  • Straw drinker (= Astomi or mouthless)
  • Astomes (Kleinmündler)
  • Apple smell (otherwise Astomi - they live from the smell of apples)
  • Omnivores (panphagi)
  • Poison immune
  • Whitebearers (Macrobii, are born with white hair, darken later; identical to the eight-fingered)
  • Long-lasting (live to be 200 years old)
  • Pilosi
  • Ippopodes (with pear feet)
  • Arhines (flat faces; without a nose)
  • Amycteres (Lippenschattler)
  • Tongueless
  • Gramantes (in Africa)

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Greta Austin: Marvelous Peoples or Marvelous Races? Race and the Anglo-Saxon Wonders of the East . In: Thomas S. Jones (Ed.), David A. Sprunger (Ed.): Marvels, Monsters and Miracles. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations . (Studies in Medieval Culture. Vol. 42)
  2. ↑ According to Jean Céards: La Nature et les prodiges. (in Travaux d´Humanisme et Ranaissance. Vol. 158; Geneva 1977) ( p. 32 )
  3. ↑ Ivan Kupcik: Old Maps. From antiquity to the end of the 19th century. Publisher: Dausien Werner; 7th edition; 1998; ISBN 9783768418737
  4. ↑ Yvonne Caroline Schauch: meeting and dealing with strangers in "Herzog Ernst". Student thesis , GRIN Verlag, 1999, p. 68 at google-books
  5. ↑ Rudolf Simek : Old Norse Cosmography: Studies and sources on the worldview and description of the world in Norway and Iceland from the 12th to the 14th century , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1990; ISBN 3-11-012181-6 ; at google books