The Androphagi [Anthropophagi] have the most savage manners of all. They neither acknowledge any rule of right nor observe any customary law… . [They] have a language all their own, and alone of all these nations they are man-eaters.

—Herodotus, The Histories of Herodotus (440 B.C.)

It is said that the Blemmyae have no heads and that their mouth and eyes are put in their chests.

—Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historiae (75 A.D.)

… another island, midway, live people of stature and ugly nature, which have no head and their eyes on the back and mouth, crooked as a horseshoe, in the midst of the breasts. On another island, there are many people without heads, and which has the eyes and head in the back.

—Wonders of the World (1356)

Gaora is a river, on the banks of which are a people whose head grow beneath their shoulders. Their eyes on in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts.

—Hakluyt’s Voyages (1598)

To the west of Caroli are divers nations of Cannibals, and of those Ewaipanoma without heads.

—Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of Guiana

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach …

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.

Shakespeare, Othello