Demon Fish

by Juliet Eilperin

  While most ancient thinkers provided anthropocentric accounts of sharks, Greeks such as Aristotle also studied the animals, and their close relations, for themselves. Aristotle dubbed them, collectively, selache, a name that still defines these animals more than two thousand years later. In one of his most vivid accounts of shark behavior, Aristotle described their mating rites: the cartilaginous fishes in copulation “hang together after the fashion of dogs, … the long-tailed ones mounting the others, unless the latter have a thick tail preventing this, when they come together belly to belly.”7

  The Islamic world offered its seminal account of sharks in 1270, when the Iraqi judge Zakariya Qazwini compiled an illustrated compendium titled The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existence. The book, which was popular reading for hundreds of years, described how some residents lived in fear of the freshwater sharks that swam in the Tigris River. Matthew McDavitt, who practices law for a living in Charlottesville, Virginia, but spends much of his free time documenting how ancient cultures viewed sharks and other elasmobranchs, commissioned a translation of the book’s folio 71v, its section on the Persian Sea:

  This is a great evil in the sea. It is like the crocodiles in the Nile River. Also it comes at a specific time mainly into the Tigris River. Some [other fish that ascend the Tigris River] are well-known: Al-Arabian, Al-Dahi, Al-Adaq, Al-Barak, and Al-Kubrij, all different species of fish. Each type comes at certain times, known to the people of Basra. One of them is known as Al-Tin [literally, “the dragon”; also known as Tinin]. It is worse than Al-Kusaj [shark]. It has teeth like spearheads. It is as long as a palm-tree. Its eyes are like fires of blood. It has an ugly shape; all other species run away from it.

  While these early scientific accounts by Greeks, Romans, and Iraqis detail the real-world interactions between sharks and other species, many ancient island and coastal cultures elsewhere focused on sharks’ more mythical aspects. They constructed elaborate and abstract belief systems in which the animals represented different core values: sharks and rays symbolized law and justice to tribes and clans in Australia, Papua New Guinea, and central Africa, while they embodied aquatic fertility and warfare in the Yucatán. These stories portrayed sharks with greater complexity and helped explain the world in which these people lived. While aboriginal Australians developed very different beliefs about sharks compared with the Mayans, native Hawaiians, and men and women living on the Niger Delta, all of these societies saw their lives as intimately connected to sharks and their close relatives rays.

  McDavitt became interested in ancient societies’ perceptions when he was an undergraduate anthropology major at the University of Virginia in the early 1990s and he saw sawfish snouts depicted repeatedly in Aztec art. “No one could explain what they were,” he recalls. He decided to learn the Aztec language in order to delve into the question, but it took years of research to unravel the puzzle.

  McDavitt focused on a little-known figure in Aztec mythology called Cipactli, a sea monster who wrestled with four gods who were busy creating the world. The gods ripped the monster in half, according to Aztec lore, making the heavens from her upper body and the earth from her lower half, leaving Cipactli in a paralyzed state where she took on the identity of Tlaltecuhtli, or Earth-Lord. Cipactli is depicted in a number of ways in Aztec art: while the monster’s body resembles a crocodile, it boasts a sharklike tail, and at times what McDavitt calls “a strange, toothy appendage” that conjures up a sawfish’s rostrum. The sawfish rostrum frequently represents a sword in Aztec iconography, and in the case of Cipactli it was known as the monster’s “sword” or “striker.”

  In the late 1970s archaeologists discovered the ruins of the Aztec Great Temple underneath Mexico City’s central plaza, unearthing the remains of sharks, swordfish, and crocodiles among their finds. Piecing together the images he had seen as an undergraduate, McDavitt hypothesizes these remains represent “the personified earth, at once fertile and destructive.” The sharp objects could have belonged to ritual implements that were used in human sacrifice, he notes, or could have been offerings to the gods in themselves. Either way, he writes, they show that Cipactli—part shark, part sawfish—clearly played a central role in Aztec cosmology by providing a transition between sea and land. “By cyclically defeating Cipactli and entombing her beneath the Great Temple, perhaps the Aztecs hoped to ensure that their living, hostile earth never again found the strength to submerge.”8

  Sharks and rays also played a key role in the way Australian aboriginals living along the coast viewed the creation of their world and their own ancestors. The Yolngu peoples—who live in northeastern Arnhem Land—are divided into some clans, but many of these clans claim to have descended from a whaler shark known as Mäna. (“Whaler shark” is an Australian colloquialism for sharks they believed attacked whales; in this case the Yolngu are referring to freshwater bull sharks.) Mäna plays the role of an avenger: attacked by the ancestor of another clan, he left the sea and invaded the land, carving up rivers with his sharp teeth and leaving the teeth behind to take the form of pandanus trees that line these rivers’ banks. The leaves of these trees have serrated edges. According to McDavitt, “These trees represent both Mäna’s anger at being speared and the stingray-spine tipped spear that Mäna carried to avenge his death.”9

  A consistent theme of intimate connection emerges across several shark-worshipping cultures: the shark gods take a tribal approach to picking winners and losers, rather than bestowing their largesse over a broad population. In this sense they operate as an extension of family, just more powerful. It’s a parochial vision of a deity, where a supernatural shark is akin to a Mafia godfather, to whom individuals can appeal for favors as long as they have paid regular dues to the don over time. Loyalty and familial ties matter above all; it is not a question of the gods making an impartial judgment about what is right.

  Native Hawaiians took this practice to the extreme, creating a series of traditions based on the belief in supernatural helpers who are half-human, half-god, and use another medium to communicate their advice. Known as ‘aumãkua, these spirits had a single human keeper (kahu) who tended to them, and they would pass on their service from one generation to the next. Not all these ‘aumãkua were sharks: some were birds or even plants. But many Hawaiians were proud to claim a shark ‘aumãkua as part of their familial heritage, and these supernatural beings had a clear, practical purpose: they were supposed to help fishermen haul in significant catches and protect them from drowning.

  In an essay, Martha Warren Beckwith recounts how she visited a village where two brothers from a family named Puhi, or Eel, inspired fear among their neighbors because they had an ‘aumãkua at their command. A native clergyman named Kawai from a nearby village explained to Beckwith how the Puhi brothers benefited from this arrangement: “When the Puhi go fishing, the shark appears. The ‘aumãkua obeys the voice of the man; name the kind of fish you want and it will bring it. The men give it some of the first catch, then it disappears, and they always come back with full nets.” The villagers, including the Puhi brothers, were confident that their ability to haul in fish was solely due to their having a divine shark on their side.10 And the ‘aumãkua not only delivered financial rewards to the Puhi brothers, the clergyman told Beckwith, but also kept them alive despite their dangerous profession. “Besides this, the Puhi family can never be drowned. If there is a storm and the boat capsizes, the shark appears and the man rides on its back.”11 A similar tradition lives on in Vietnam, where some fishermen still build altars on beaches to the whale shark, which they call Ca Ong, or Mister Fish, to stay safe while on the water.

  In some cases, these ‘aumãkua represented a reincarnation of a dead relative, whether it was an aborted fetus or an elderly family member whose bones were wrapped in a cloth and cast out into the sea. One account dating from 1870 describes how a few days after relatives performed such a ceremony, they could “see with their own eyes that the deceased had become a shark, with al
l the signs by which they could not fail to recognize the loved one in a deep ocean.”12 This intensely personal connection to sharks not only provided comfort at a time of grief but also gave an entire family confidence that they now had someone defending them when they went out to sea.

  At the same time many Hawaiians relied on these familiar, ancestral gods for everyday guidance, they also worshipped the akua, much more powerful shark deities that influenced the weather and other forces of nature. The shark Kalahiki, one of the more powerful gods, could predict when the wind and currents would be rough and could marshal a company of sharks to bring seafarers safely in to shore.13 In fact Beckwith describes the ‘aumãkua as “ranked as kauwa, or of the servant class, because bound to obey those whom he serves.”14 Even the most powerful shark deities were viewed as having regional allegiances, however. When a dry dock built by American forces collapsed in 1914, many Hawaiians attributed the disaster to the female shark god Ka’ahupãhau, who reportedly protected local residents from the man-eating sharks that lurked offshore. In this case Ka’ahupãhau was defending locals from the Americans, rather than from threatening ocean predators.

  According to legend, Ka’ahupãhau was willing to fight off her own kind as well in defense of the humans who had treated her well over the years. At one point, the tale goes, sharks from another area came upon Oahu and started eyeing what they referred to as “delicious looking crabs.” Knowing that that amounts to a code name in the shark language for humans, Ka’ahupãhau and her brother Kahi’ukã (the Smiting Tail) devise a particularly clever way to dispatch these hostile visitors: through fishing. Ka’ahupãhau turns herself into a net and, with the aid of her brother, catches the sharks so they can be hauled in by fishermen and left to die in the heat.15

  The sharks that populate Hawaiian lore frequently mete out justice, protecting some humans while consuming others. In many cases these beings blur the line between human and animal: Ka’ehikimanõ-o-pu’uloa is the child of humans who is born a shark, nursed on his mother’s milk and ‘awa, the alcoholic drink humans often offered the sharks they worshipped. Ka’ehikimanõ-o-pu’uloa embarks on a sightseeing trip in which he pays homage to the shark gods of several islands; while they initially suspect him because of his human origins, Ka’ehikimanõ-o-pu’uloa manages to lead them and conspires to kill a man-eating shark. In the end the young shark returns to his human parents, where he “conveyed the greetings of the various distinguished sharks, and told of his victories and honors.”16 Ka’ehikimanõ-o-pu’uloa serves as a bridge between the world of humans and that of sharks, demonstrating that the two species can coexist if each one acknowledges the distinct role of the other.

  Unsurprisingly, several stories about these supernatural sharks provide explanations for why humans fall prey to sharks at sea. Kauhi, a suspicious lover who wrongly concludes his betrothed has betrayed him, is executed after repeatedly trying to murder his fiancée. But one of his relatives, a shark god, saves him by wiping him away in a tidal wave and transforming him into a shark. When his former fiancée, Kahalaopuna, can’t resist surfing with her friends, “he bit her in two and held the upper half of the body up out of the water, so that all the surf-bathers would see and know that he had at last obtained his revenge.”17

  The fact that the best-known Hawaiian shark tale, “Nanaue the Shark Man,” has so many variations highlights how ancient Hawaiians were fixated on the danger they faced in the water. The basic outline of the story is as follows: The king-shark god of Hawaii and Maui, Kamohiali’i—who is popularly credited by Hawaiians with inventing surfing—seduces a beautiful human called Kalei. Together they produce a child named Nanaue, who looks normal aside from the fact that he has a shark’s mouth between his shoulder blades, which he is forced to cover with a cloak. Kamohiali’i warns Kalei she should never feed their son animal meat, lest he develop a taste for human flesh. But Nanaue’s human grandfather ignores this admonition, and over time the boy grows ravenous for human flesh. After being uncloaked by his fellow villagers, Nanaue manages—with the help of his god-father—to escape to sea as a shark, reclaiming his human form once he lands on another island, Moloka’i. Nanaue finds himself pitted against a demigod known as Unauna, or Hermit Crab. With Unauna’s aid the villagers manage to tie up Nanaue and burn him, in a place that still bears the name Shark Hill. There are many variations on this theme—in one tale the shark man is Kawelo o Mãnã, a sorcerer; in another it’s Pau-walu (Many Destroyed)—but in each case the attacker warns his victims in advance of the risks they take by entering the ocean.18

  This nuanced portrayal of sharks highlights a central tenet of these ancient belief systems: sharks are neither pure evil nor pure good, but something of a mix. McDavitt attributes this to the fact that these islanders, coastal tribes, and river dwellers saw sharks on a regular basis. “If you have a society that’s not very engaged with them, it tends to be a monolithic and negative view,” he reasons. “If they’re engaged, you might see a more balanced view of them.”

  The Ijo peoples living along the Niger River delta in southern Nigeria also believe in water spirits that are both dangerous and beneficial. According to their legend, these spirits used to play along the beach in masked dances and left their masks on the shore. In late December the Ijo summon the spirits by wearing large masks showing sharks and rays, becoming possessed in an effort to get rid of illness and misfortune. In this tradition, the dances provide a way for the water spirits to “play” with their human friends, but there remains an element of risk in this exchange. As Martha G. Anderson and Philip M. Peek write in their book, Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta, a masked dancer “can interrupt a dance sequence to dive at the drummers through the pole fence provided for their protection or dart around it to attack them. He might go crazy, slashing wildly at his own supporters until others join forces to restrain him, only to follow this by locking one of his human friends in an affectionate embrace.”19 Other societies in the region channel water spirits differently. The Bidjogo of Guinea-Bissau stage dances with shark, sawfish, and stingray costumes as well, but these are used for young men’s coming-of-age ceremonies. For them, harnessing these sea creatures’ powers allows them to become men at last.20

  These ancient societies used sharks for practical purposes as well. Aborigines living along Australia’s coasts have eaten stingrays and sharks for years, often in the form of a round cake that combines shredded meat with the animal’s heated or raw liver. (The Lardil people living on Mornington Island, in fact, use a fist lying on a cupped hand as the sign-language symbol for sharks and rays, mimicking the shape of this rounded cake.21) Australian aborigines used other shark and ray products for weapons and ornaments as well: the vertebrae became necklace beads, while the Wik from Cape York fashioned the tails of rays into circles they sported as knuckle-style hand weapons, in the same way Hawaiians made ones out of sharks’ teeth.22 Australians, like Hawaiians, used sharks’ teeth to create both cutting implements and war clubs. Their skin served as a sort of sandpaper and was even used for drums.23

  Thousands of miles away in New England and Florida, American Indians were using sharks for many of the same purposes—sandpaper, tools, and ornaments. It appears sharks’ teeth became a commodity used in trading, since a Native American burial site in Ohio included teeth from a great white shark among its finds. The fact that shark remains have surfaced in a range of such burial sites, in locations throughout southern New England and Nova Scotia, suggests that these peoples viewed sharks as deities even as they hunted them in prehistoric times. They used the teeth from some of the fiercest sharks—great white, short-fin mako, and sand tiger—as grave gods, even as they targeted the spiny dogfish for their dinner.24 And in a sign of how New England waters have changed over time, evidence from American Indian middens in the region show these societies consumed cod and different species of sharks, but not the lobster that defines much of the Gulf of Maine today.

  Some societies also us
ed shark worship as an excuse for human sacrifice on earth, as well as for their own entertainment. In the Solomon Islands villagers viewed sharks as good but demanding deities, for whom they constructed worship caves along with stone altars nearby. To pay tribute to them, the villagers selected human victims to lay upon those altars. Several Pacific island tribes also occasionally sacrificed a man, woman, or child, but these cultures viewed the shark gods as hostile. They observed a ritual in which a high priest would approach a crowd along with an assistant wearing a mask whose nose resembled a shark’s snout—when the priest instructed the assistant to point his nose at the assembled throng, the person who became the target of the assistant’s gaze would be offered up to the sea.

  Hawaiian kings used to engage in a particularly gruesome ritual in which they ordered gladiators to fight a shark to the death in a circumscribed, watery arena. To lure the sharks into battle, Hawaiians tossed both fish and human bait into the water; once the fight began, the rules of engagement favored the fish. Not only did the human competitor have to let the shark lunge toward him before he could attack, but his only weapon was a single shark’s tooth mounted on a piece of wood that he could hold clenched in his fist. Faced with those odds, few gladiators survived.25

  While several cultures in the Pacific and Latin America incorporated sharks into their everyday and spiritual lives, an odd thing transpired in Europe as it entered the Middle Ages: people forgot sharks existed. Europeans at the time believed in a large, ill-defined group of sea monsters, but they stopped generating any literature that referred specifically to sharks. Medieval Christian accounts of animals included whales, panthers, and plenty of other wild creatures, but the “dogfish” that caught the attention of Greek and Roman philosophers had no place. Even once the Renaissance began, Europeans used shark artifacts without knowing what they were. A ceremonial practice began of dipping glossopetrae, or dragon “tongue stones,” into wine—these were sharks’ teeth, but the men and women who fetishized them didn’t have a clue.26 This historical break, where Europeans lost their connection to sharks altogether, had profound implications for how the West views sharks today. Severing that historic tie helped ensure that going forward, sharks would become humans’ outright opponents.