As elementary as the answer may seem, the truth is that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has had to warn in a statement that "no evidence of the existence of these aquatic humanoids has ever been found."
The reason for this unusual announcement was the broadcast of a documentary on the popular Animal Planet television network of the Discovery Channel . The feature film, entitled 'Sirens: the body found' suggested the possible existence of mermaids and was very successful among the American population.
In spite of everything, the NOAA statement is ambiguous and leaves a question in the air: "Why, then, does it occupy the collective unconscious of almost all the seafaring peoples? That is a question best left to historians, philosophers and anthropologists ".
NOAA also reviews the history of these legendary beings : "In the ancient Far East, mermaids were the wives of powerful sea dragons, and served as trusted messengers between their spouses and emperors on earth," and remember that Homer already spoke of them in his famous work 'The Odyssey'. "Mermaids first appeared in cave paintings in the late Paleolithic (Stone Age), a period of about 30,000 years ago, when modern men gained dominion over the land and, presumably, began to navigate the seas", explains the statement.
