Are Mermaids Real? No — So Why Do Nearly All Seafaring Cultures Have Them?

No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Mermaids — half human, half fish — are legends. But they are remarkably widespread legends, told by maritime cultures for as long as anyone has recorded stories about the sea.

A statue of a sailor mermaid in Portsmouth, Virginia. Credit: NOAA.

A legend told everywhere

• Ancient Greece. The epic poet Homer wrote of them in The Odyssey.
• The ancient Far East. Mermaids were the wives of powerful sea-dragons, and trusted messengers between their husbands and the emperors on land.
• Aboriginal Australia. The aboriginal people of Australia call mermaids yawkyawks — a name that may refer to their mesmerizing songs.

A belief as old as us?

The idea may go back to the dawn of our species. Magical female figures first appear in cave paintings of the late Paleolithic, or Stone Age, some 30,000 years ago — around the time modern humans gained dominion over the land and, presumably, began to sail the seas. Mermaids also belong to a larger family of half-human creatures in mythology, called chimeras: wise centaurs, wild satyrs and frightful minotaurs among them.

The open question

If mermaids are not real, why do they live in the collective imagination of nearly every seafaring people? NOAA leaves that question to the historians, philosophers and anthropologists.

Sources

Based on "Are mermaids real?" from NOAA's National Ocean Service, a work of the United States government in the public domain.