Interpretations
Distorted accounts of apes may have contributed to both the ancient and medieval conception of the wild man. In his Natural History Pliny the Elder describes a race of silvestres (wild) creatures in India who had humanoid bodies but a coat of fur, fangs, and no capacity to speak - a description that fits gibbons indigenous to the area. The ancient Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator (fl. 500 BC) reported an encounter a tribe of savage men and hairy women in what may have been Sierra Leone; their interpreters called them "Gorillae", a story which much later gave rise to the name of the gorilla species and could indeed have related to a great ape. Similarly, the Greek historian Agatharchides describes what may have been chimpanzees as tribes of agile, promiscuous "seed-eaters" and "wood-eaters" living in Ethiopia.
As the name implies, the key characteristic of the wild man is his wildness. "Civilised" citizens regarded wild men as beings of the wilderness, and as such as representing the antithesis of civilization. Scholar Dorothy Yamamoto has noted that the "wilderness" inhabited by the wild man does not truly indicate a place totally beyond human reach, but rather the liminal zone at the edge of civilization, the place inhabited by hunters, criminals, religious hermits, herdsmen, and others who frequent the margins of human activity. Other characteristics developed or transmuted in different contexts. From the earliest times our sources associated wild men with hairiness; by the 12th century they were almost invariably described as having a coat of hair covering their entire bodies except for their hands, feet, faces above their long beards, and the breasts and chins of the females.
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