Dagger-clawed little people

The folktales of all Southasian countries have legends concerning 'beast-men', and Sri Lanka is no exception. From the island's dimly illuminated past come curious jungle tales of the Nittaewo, a supposedly beastlike race characterised by hairy bodies and extremely long nails. It has been postulated by some that the Nittaewo were confused with a species of monkey or bear, while others are convinced that they must have been early hominids or ape-men. In the absence of skeletal remains, however, no precise identification can be made. And so, the Nittaewo continues to be one of the great enigmas associated with Sri Lanka.

The first person to write in detail about the 'little men' who inhabited the island then known as Taprobane was Ctesias, a Greek physician at the Persian court during the fourth century BC. Ctesias also wrote of cynocephali, dog-faced men or apes "whose clothes are the skins of wild beasts. They have no language; they bark like dogs … Their teeth are larger than those of dogs; their nails are like those of animals, but longer and more curved." Subsequently, during the first century AD, Pliny the Elder mentioned the occurrence of 'beast-men' in the region. The mystery surrounding their identity appeared to be solved in 400 AD, when one Bishop Palladius described a race of primitive people to be found on the island. But Palladius was referring to the Veddah, an aboriginal tribe, racially mixed remnants of which exist to this day – Sri Lanka's last link with its prehistory. The belief in the existence of Taprobanese beast-men was revived during the 14th century after the Moroccan traveller Ibn Batuta visited the island. "These animals are very numerous in the mountains," he wrote, probably referring to the purple-faced leaf monkey (Trachypithecus vetulus), which today is known to the Sinhalese as kalu-wanderoo.