>>149018701 (OP)Anon back then the learned men of the world proposed, claimed and sometimes believed that there were dog headed men, long eared people who wore their own ears as clothing, and people who had faces on their chest.
Not to say they didn't casually just believe it, many actually sought to prove or disprove their existence, explorers and missionaries wrote of how "Manticores" were actuallt tigers and "Sciapods" were actually indians who sat under trees and used umbrellas, an Emperor from the HRE i believe actually tried to check if the fabled barnacle birds of Ireland were real and came to the conclusion that they couldn't actually exist.
Furthermore people back then also believed shit like a book that would give you knowledge of everything, or people given holy visions, or vampires and werewolves, as revently as the 19th century someone got burnt for being a "vampire"
With this in mind, it's more likely that people "knew" of mutants under different names because a kid who can levitate objects is either a spawn of satan or given divine powers or are actually an angel in disguise.
and that's just the European perspective, what about other countries who had their own curiosities?