Images of an alleged “mermaid” were uploaded in Facebook few hours ago by Link Tungsen. This aquatic creature has an upper body of a female human, but its lower part is a scaly tail of a fish. A mermaid is believed to be a folklore that is common in various cultures across the whole world especially in Asia, Europe, Near East, and Africa.
The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal shepherd and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid-human above the waist, fish below—though the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish with a human head and arm, similar to the Babylonian Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo.
Since then, many other mermaid stories have appeared in folklore from various cultures around the world. For instance, the African water spirit Mami Wata is mermaid in form, as is the water spirit Lasirn, who is popular in folklore in the Caribbean Islands.
