Gorilla Women of the Amazon

According to Sue Hubbell's book about genetic engineering through the ages, Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes, there was a Phoenician explorer in ancient times, by the name of Hanno, who was allegedly among the first Mediterranean people to see a gorilla. The name of this great ape is derived from a word in an unknown African language that the Phoenicians heard local people call the animal.

A Greek document has been handed down that supposedly contains original transcriptions of Hanno's description of the strange "Gorillae" jungle people that he and his crew encountered in Africa. When reading the following lines, bear in mind that we humans share an almost complete genetic likeness to gorillas, so it's not really that much of an odd step for Hanno to interpret the animals as a strange, human tribe:

In the recess of this bay there was an island full of savage men. There were women, too, in even greater number. They had hairy bodies and the interpreters called them Gorillae. When we pursued them we were unable to take any of the men; for they all escaped, by climbing steep places and defending themselves with stones; but we took three of the women, who bit and scratched ... and would not follow us. So we killed them and flayed them, and brought their skins to Carthage.

Apparantly a number of writers from later times reported having seen these skins in Carthage (before the city was destroyed), which were believed to have belonged to strange women of a mysterious tribe living in the South ... and some think that these gorilla skins may have been the inspiration for the legend of the fierce warrior women - the Amazons.