Long before mermaids became red-haired princesses, glittering Halloween costumes, or mysterious women painted on the sides of ships, human beings were telling stories about people who belonged to the water.

There is something about the sea that has always made us suspicious.

Stand at the edge of it long enough and you can understand why.

The ocean is beautiful, certainly. It sparkles. It shimmers. It stretches farther than we can see. But beneath that lovely blue surface is an entire world we cannot enter without help, filled with creatures that seem to have been designed by someone with a particularly strange imagination.

For most of human history, we couldn't even see much of it.

So naturally, we populated it ourselves.

And among all the creatures we placed beneath the waves, none has endured quite like the mermaid.

Before There Were Mermaids

The mermaid as we picture her today — a beautiful woman from the waist up and a fish from the waist down — is only one chapter in a much older story.

Ancient cultures around the world imagined beings that existed somewhere between human and aquatic life.

One of the earliest frequently cited examples comes from ancient Syria, where the goddess Atargatis was associated with water and fish. Later traditions described her in a form combining woman and fish, although ancient depictions and accounts varied considerably.

Long before the familiar European mermaid had settled into her recognizable form, water deities, spirits, nymphs, monsters, and shape-shifters were already occupying rivers, springs, lakes, and seas.

The Greeks had Nereids and Oceanids.

The Romans inherited and reshaped many of those traditions.

Across Europe, stories developed about water spirits who could bless, seduce, deceive, marry, drown, prophesy, or disappear without explanation.

And then there were the sirens.

Sailors Swore They Saw Them

Mermaids weren't confined to fireside stories.

People reported seeing them.

Christopher Columbus famously recorded an encounter with what he believed were mermaids near Hispaniola in 1493. He was somewhat disappointed, noting that they were not as beautiful as they were usually painted.

The likely culprits were manatees.

This explanation is often met with a certain amount of modern disbelief.

How could an experienced sailor possibly mistake a manatee for a beautiful woman?

Spend several months at sea in the fifteenth century and perhaps we'll discuss it again.

More importantly, sailors were looking at unfamiliar animals through a world already filled with mermaid stories. Human beings rarely observe anything without interpreting it through things they already know.

A strange head rises from the water.

There appears to be a face.

The creature vanishes.

By the time the story reaches shore, she may have excellent hair.

Every Culture Gave the Water Its Own People

One of the fascinating things about mermaid lore is that mermaid-like beings aren't confined to a single country.

Scotland and Ireland gave us tales of selkies, beings who live as seals in the water but can shed their skins and become human on land.

Scottish folklore also tells of the ceasg, a mermaid-like being whose capture could bring granted wishes — although, as folklore repeatedly teaches us, bargains involving magical beings are rarely an uncomplicated financial decision.

Across parts of northern Europe, stories circulated about water spirits such as nixies and necks.

Slavic traditions contain the rusalka, whose identity and character changed considerably across regions and eras but who was often associated with water, beauty, danger, and the dead.

West and Central African traditions include powerful water-spirit beliefs that later contributed to the complex figure widely known as Mami Wata, whose imagery and traditions developed through centuries of cultural exchange.

Japan has traditions surrounding the ningyo, a strange fish-like being that bears little resemblance to the glamorous Western mermaid but occupies similar territory between humanity, mystery, and the sea.

These beings are not simply different names for the same creature. Each belongs to its own cultural history and should be understood on its own terms.

But together they reveal something remarkable.

Again and again, human beings looked into water and imagined something looking back.

Why Do We Still Love Them?

Because the mermaid lives between things.

She is human, but not human.

Wild, but familiar.

Beautiful, but potentially dangerous.

She belongs to a world we can see but cannot inhabit.

That makes her an extraordinarily flexible symbol.

Mermaids can represent freedom.

Sexuality.

Danger.

Transformation.

Femininity.

Power.

Grief.

Rebellion.

The unknown.

The desire to escape.

The desire to belong.

They can be monsters in one story and heroines in the next without either version feeling entirely wrong.

Perhaps most importantly, the mermaid embodies a fantasy human beings have never quite outgrown:

What if there is another world just beyond our reach?

Not on another planet.

Not in some distant heaven.

Right there.

Beneath the surface.