He wrote in his book, The Wonderful Forms of Different Nation, about men with "green eyes and white hair", people with "2 pupils on each eye", people with "heads of dogs", and people with "one leg and no neck". Only a selected few wrote these stories, yet they were accepted by the vast majority because they did not question those scholars or men of intellect who wrote them. For example, Pliny quotes Aristotle in his book when writing about one of the people he encountered, which where half male and half female, Aristotle stated that, "their right breast is that of a male and the left that of a female"[ CITATION Pli69 l 1033 ]. Novels such as Travels of Sir Mande and Marco Polo's travels also described monsters, "men with horns", and "men who cannot speak only cry". Most of the people they encountered were from Asia (East) and Africa. As we know, these groups of people tend to have a darker complexion and so the association with monsters and deformities became synonymous with dark skin. It was ultimately a way to try and depict those who were different than them. .
Europeans had a preconceived notion of what kind of things and people they would encounter because of the "single story" they had heard over and over. It became the only knowledge they had of foreign people. Edward Said, a professor from Columbia University, felt that European perceptions of Middle East had not changed for many years; they were portrayed as erotic, mysterious, and full of marvels, he called this Orientalism. This how categorizing a culture has also led to racial categorizing. Another important thing to add is that, religion was a crucial part of European development in medieval times. Their lives revolved around Christian ideologies and some of the monsters portrayed in the stories were now thought to be devils. The "devils were considered aggressive, murderous and malformed" [ CITATION Deb00 l 1033 ] like many of the "human monstrous races" [CITATION Deb00 l 1033].
