Abstract
Large sharks were known to the Greeks and Romans, and references to large sharks of the Mediterranean are found in the writings of classical writers. However, large sharks are conspicuously absent from the medieval bestiaries that described the then known fauna. The explanation for this interesting omission is simple: Medieval man did not encounter large sharks because he fished mainly in rivers and close to shore and did not venture far into the ocean to catch fish, and the few large European sharks did not venture into rivers or shallow waters. The Spanish and the English first encountered large sharks in the American tropics. Both groups borrowed Amerindian words to designate them. The Spanish borrowed the word tiburón from the Carib Indians, and, later, the English borrowed tiburón from the Spanish and used it for about 100 years. In the late sixteenth century, the English borrowed the word xoc from the Mayans and it became the English word shark.
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Castro, J.I. On the Origins of the Spanish Word ‘tiburón’, and the english word ‘shark’. Environmental Biology of Fishes 65, 249–253 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020591206657
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020591206657