El Dorado was a land of fantastical creatures and tribes, according to Sir Walter Raleigh. Not only were there powerful Amazons warriors lurking, but there were also headless Ewaipanoma and marvelous animals: armadillos, tigers, turtles and wild pigs. The Ewaipanoma, wrote Raleigh in his book, "The Discoverie of Guiana," were a tribe of people "whose heades appeare not above their shoulders." Raleigh admitted that many thought this was "a meere fable," but adds that "for mine owne parte I am resolved it is true. They are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders and their mouths in the middle of their breasts, and that a long train of haire groweth backward between their shoulders." Shakespeare may have been influenced by Raleigh's work when he included this passage in Othello:

"...the cannibals, that each other eat.
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow between their shoulders."