There are many questions as to whether this community, considered “monstrous” in medieval writings, actually existed. However, all the evidence points to the existence of such a people at the time. Although it seems unlikely evolutionarily, Piri Reis’ map is accepted as one of these proofs.
It is highly probable that these headless creatures, which also entered the map of Piri Reis, actually represent a people in Africa!
This community, which is also mentioned in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), lived between 600 BC and 300 AD.
In the Nuremberg Chronicle, which is a manuscript in which the history of humanity is told with drawings and we know as the Bible, these people were nomadic in Nubia (also known as Nube or Nubia) in the south of Egypt, the region stretching along the Nile River to Sudan. It is said that they represent the people of Africa, a kingdom.
However, Mandeville, who gives the most detailed information about them, claims that they are a people living in the Andaman Islands in Southeast Asia, unlike Africa.
The famous English traveler of the 14th century, John Mandeville, is one of the people who talk about this community.
Mandeville’s travel book for pilgrims going to Jerusalem talks about mysterious creatures that he sees as interesting, such as the Blemmiyae people, known as acaibü’l mahlukat in Islamic literature. He also says the following about this people whose faces are on their bodies:
“On the other hand, there is an ugly people who have no head and their eyes stick out on their shoulders. Their mouths are round like a horseshoe and are in the middle of their breasts. In another place, there are others with eyes and mouths protruding on their backs. In another place, there are people with straight faces, no noses and no eyes, instead they have two small dimples and have flat, lipless mouths.”
In the sources they are described as headless ugly people with eyes on their shoulders.
I have to admit that at first it sounds very illogical and imaginary. So, did these depictions drawn in different sources express a common imagination of everyone? If this is not the case, what was the truth of the matter, why did these people come to this? Let’s see together.
According to a general opinion, they are thought to have caused a legend with their neckless and their faces on their chests because of “the kind of shields that reveal the faces” they carry.
It is also among the rumors that the depiction on the map of Piri Reis is the “antichrist”.
An attempt was made to create a different human form, headless and with their faces on their chests, and these legends spread from language to language, and after a while, these people were thought to be real. The drawings put forward as the antichrist in Piri Reis’ map also come to the same story.
Depictions of Blemmyae were found on the Andrea Bianco map during the Late Middle Ages.
We do not know whether the Blemmyae people, who inspired many such medieval sources and pioneered drawing interesting descriptions, actually existed or not, but one thing we do know is that such a thing does not seem evolutionarily possible. When we look at the product of this imagination, which cannot go beyond a legend, we have much more to learn from the Middle Ages.
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