ACEPHALOUS, or ACEPHALUS, in a general sense, without a head. The term is more particularly used in speaking of certain nations or people, represented by ancient naturalists and cosmographers, as well as by some modern travellers, as formed without heads; their eyes, mouth, &c. being placed in other parts. Such are the Blemmyes, a nation of Africa, near the head of the Niger, represented to be by Pliny and Solinus: Blemmyis traduntur capita abesse, ore et oculis pectori affixis. Ctesias and Solinus mention others in India, near the Ganges, sine cerecice, oculos in humeris habentes. Mela also speaks of people, quibus capita et vultus in pectore sunt. And Suidas, Stephanus Byzantinus, Vopiscus, and others after them, relate the like. Some modern travellers have pretended to find acephalous people in America.
Several opinions have been framed as to the origin of the fable of the Acephali. The first is that of Thomas Bartholine, who turns the whole into a metaphor; being convinced, that the name Acephali was anciently given to such as had less brain, or conducted themselves less by the rules of prudence, than others. Olearius rather apprehends that the ancient voyagers, viewing certain barbarous people from the coasts, had been imposed on by their uncomely dress; for that the Samogitians, being short of stature, and going in the severity of winter with their heads covered in hoods, seem at a distance as if they were headless. F. Lafitau says, that by Acephali
Acephalus are only meant people whose heads are sunk below their shoulders. Hulsius, in his epitome of Sir Walter Raleigh's Voyage to Guiana, speaks of a people which that traveller found between the lakes of Panama and Cassipa, who had no head or neck; and Hondius, in his map, marks the place with the figures of these monsters. But De Laet1 rejects the story; being informed by others, that the inhabitants of the banks of the Caora, a river that flows out of the lake of Cassipa, have their heads so far sunk between their shoulders, that many believed they had their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in their breasts.