Country file · Asia & the Middle East

Cryptids of Sri Lanka

What cryptids are in Sri Lanka? The best-known is Nittaewo.

Sri Lanka’s best-known cryptid is the nittaewo, a race of small, clawed, hairy beings remembered in the oral history of the Veddah, the island’s indigenous people. The story was written down by Hugh Nevill in 1886 and by Frederick Lewis in 1914–15, and tells of a cave in the south-east where the last nittaewo were destroyed in the 18th century.

  • 1 cryptid
  • 5 recorded sightings

Cryptids reported in Sri Lanka

Hominid · Before 1886

Nittaewo

South-east Sri Lanka (Mahaenama, Yala) Sri Lanka’s small clawed hairy people from Veddah lore, said to have been wiped out in a cave about 250 years ago – or never to have existed. Local legend

The legends of Sri Lanka

The dry forests of the south-east, now Yala East National Park, are the setting. Scholars have proposed sun bears, gibbons or a relict early human; others see colonial-era speculation about ‘missing links’. The Veddah remain a living community, and their traditions deserve respect.

Hotspots

  • Mahaenama and Yala East National Park

    The south-eastern area where the cave massacre is said to have occurred.

  • Kudimbigala

    Cave monastery explored in a 1963 expedition looking for traces of the nittaewo.

Sightings timeline

  1. 1886
    Hugh Nevill’s report Nittaewo

    Nevill published the first detailed account of the nittaewo in The Taprobanian, based on interviews with a headman and Veddah hunters.

  2. 1914–1915
    Frederick Lewis collects Veddah testimony Nittaewo

    Lewis interviewed elderly informants, among them a man whose grandfather was said to have joined in the cave killing, and confirmed the outline of Nevill’s story.

  3. 1963
    The Kudimbigala expedition Nittaewo

    A team led by Captain A. T. Rambukwella explored caves and reported mollusc shells and bones that he believed the nittaewo had eaten; no remains of the beings themselves were found.

  4. 1984
    A claimed sighting Nittaewo

    A Spanish anthropologist, Salvador Martinez, said he saw a short, long-haired humanlike figure that fled into the forest; it is often called the only modern sighting.

  5. 2019
    Village scare Nittaewo

    Residents described a black, claw-handed creature; the descriptions differed from the old Veddah accounts and no creature was found.

Nearby

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