The dog-headed cannibal figure predates Columbus and was projected onto the New World.

Evidence

The typical image of the cannibal-monsters was that of the cynocephalus. The first references to fantastic dog-headed peoples living in Asia date from the pre-Socratic period. They then come to inspire the medieval imagination. Marco Polo discovers, on an island, anthropophagi with dog’s heads. Columbus is the first to mention the presence of man-eaters in the New World, whom he claims have dog’s heads. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 580

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The cynocephalus is the species-level version of the reader’s monster figure — image carries from pre-Socratic Asia to the Americas unchanged.

Related

• The dog-headed monster figure traveled from ancient Asia myth to Columbus’s New World (similarity 0.92)
• The dog-headed man-eater trope traveled from pre-Socratic Asia lore to Columbus (similarity 0.91)
• The Muslim dog-man fantasy was transferred onto New World peoples as cannibals (similarity 0.80)