In the early 1700s, a man calling himself George Psalmanazar arrived in London claiming to be the first native of Formosa (modern-day Taiwan) to visit Europe. In reality, Psalmanazar was a French teenager who had spent years vagabonding across Europe disguised as a Christian pilgrim before realizing that posing as an exotic pagan would generate far more curiosity and financial support. To maintain his facade, Psalmanazar created an astonishingly detailed fantasy world.
He invented an entirely fictional Formosan language complete with an original alphabet, grammar rules, and vocabulary. He ate raw meat seasoned with heavy spices and pretended to worship the sun and moon. In 1704, he published 'An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa', a book filled with outlandish claims, such as Formosans sacrificing 18,000 young boys annually to a horned god and traveling in vessels powered by giant oars.
London's intellectual elite, including members of the Royal Society, eagerly embraced him, inviting him to lecture at Oxford University. For years, few questioned his bizarre assertions because direct European contact with East Asia was extremely limited. Eventually, growing skepticism from Jesuit missionaries and scholars forced Psalmanazar to confess his fraud, after which he spent his remaining decades as a respectable, anonymous London writer.