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http://www.interpres.cz/metrolog/mapping/hanno.htm

...The account of Hanno's voyage ends with this observation:

In the recess of this bay [i.e., the Southern Horn] there was an
island, like the former one, having a lake, in which there was another
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 had all escaped, by climbing the steep places and
defending themselves with stones; but we took three of the women,
who bit and scratched their leaders, and would not follow us. So we
killed them and flayed them, and brought their skins to Carthage.
For we did not voyage further, provisions failing us.

Hanno had spoken of having found women with hairy bodies that the
interpreters
called gorillas. Since the poet Hesiod had spoken of "the Gorgons who live
beyond the Ocean, towards the distant kingdom of the night, where there live
the
Hesperides," the source of Mela and Pliny identified the last place visited
by
Hanno, where he saw the gorillas, with the fabulous Island of the
Hesperides,
here called Island of the Gorgons. It is because of the Hesperides that
Statius
Sebosus calls the Southern Horn of Hanno by the name of Hesperium, or
Western. Pliny makes clear that the cape called by him Hesperium is confine
Africae-at the limit of Africa. The figure of 30 days is obtained by
counting 30°
or 20 days from the Equator to the foot of the Atlas at Agadir and adding
15° or
10 days for the distance east-west along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea.
<snip>
Homer (Iliad III 6) had spoken of the Pygmies as living on the shores of
Oceanus
(the river that continues the Nile along the Equatorial line). What else was
needed
to prove that the Pygmies did not exist? Hanno needed to bring back some
Pygmies as evidence that he had reached the Equator, as Columbus brought
back
some people that he called Indians and we have called Indians ever since.
Pliny
(VI 36, 200) reports that two of the hides brought back by Hanno were to be
seen in Carthage in the Temple of Juno (Tanit Pne Ba'al, the wife of Ba'al
Hammon, or Kronos) up to the destruction of the city by the Romans; his
wording, argumenti gratia, makes clear that they were brought back as
evidence. This is the reason why Hanno goes into details to explain why he
was
not able to bring them back alive and returned with the skins of three
female
specimens. Hanno intended to bring back some Pygmies, but he might have
gotten hold of some gorillas. Even though the Pygmies have more body hair
than
most other Africans, they can hardly be said to have hairy bodies. It is not
easy to
flay humans and their hides would not be particularly impressive. The
behavior of
the gorillas who climb on rocks, throw stones, defend themselves by butting
and
scratching, well fits the habits of gorillas. Those who read Hanno since the
Renaissance have understood that he was referring to anthropoid apes, and as
a
result the term gorilla has entered European languages. To me it is very
significant that Hanno, who is detailed in his description, does not refer
to the
gorillas as speaking. According to what I have been told, the natives of the
Gulf
of Guinea used to tell that the anthropoidal apes really are humans who
pretend
not to be able to speak, lest the white man put them to work. It is also
significant
that Hanno does not speak of the gorillas as being small, whereas he would
have
stressed the small size of Pygmies. The point is made complicated by the
circumstance that the habitat of the gorillas coincides more or less with
the
territory where the Pygmies dwell.

But Hanno reports that the interpreters, who must have spoken Berber, called
the
wild humans by the name of gorilla. Since in the Fulani languages the noun
for
"man" is gorko and its diminutive form is gorel, it appears that the
interpreters
learned to apply the term gorel to the Pygmies from the Fulani-speaking
tribes
who lived between them and the land of the Pygmies. Perhaps the interpreters
tried to please Hanno by assuring him that the gorillas he had captured
really were
the gorel, "little men," he was looking for.

<snip>

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2000 7:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: stone-throwing baboons

thought this was interesting - don't know anything about accuracy/ of source
how the story was observed
Dave Featherstone

Baboon Revenge

Stone-throwing baboons in Saudi Arabia waited three days on the side of a
mountain road to take revenge on a driver who had killed one of their troop.
Al-Riyadh reported that the primates ambushed the driver on the same road
between Mecca and Taif on which the baboon had been run down earlier in the
week. After spotting the car responsible for the death, one of the apes
screamed out a signal to the rest to attack, provoking a frenzied stone
throwing. Although the driver was able to escape, the apes broke out the
windshield of his car. At least 350,000 baboons live in Saudi Arabia.

> San Francisco Chronicle, page D-8, Sat. 12/9/00]