I know unicorns aren’t actually real and that I therefore can’t technically write facts about them, but screw you, this is my blog. If I want to blog about unicorns, I can.
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| That's not a unicorn, it's a goat. |
The earliest historical mention of unicorns can be found
in the 5th century BC writings of Ctesias, a Greek historian. It’s
important that I mention he was an historian because the Greeks, much like the
North Koreans, totally believed in unicorns. He described the animal as having
a purple head, a white body, blue eyes, and a horn that was white at the base,
black in the middle and red at its tip.
Alexandrian merchant Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote in the 6th
century of an Ethiopian one-horned animal that, “When it finds itself pursued
and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, and turns so aptly
in falling, that it received all the shock upon the horn, and so escapes safe
and sound.” Sounds like the elusive unicorn cat to me.
Unicorns found their way into the King James Bible
in 1611, due to a mistranslation of the Hebrew word “re’em,” defined as an
untamable wild animal of great agility and strength, “with mighty horn or
horns.” The animal was most likely an aurochs, which often appeared in
Mesopotamian and Indus Valley Civilization art and seals in profile, so it looked
like it only had one horn.
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| That's not a unicorn, it's an extinct cow. |
The belief that virginal women have the power to control
unicorns originated
in the Middle Ages, when the creature appeared in allegories as a symbol
for Christ. Unicorn horn, or alicorn, was believed to have medicinal properties
and to be capable of detecting poisons. No king worth his beard fleas was
without an alicorn horn, which would presumably stop him from being poisoned. Powdered
alicorn was sold in pharmacies up until 1741, which you will recognize as a
year that is uncomfortably recent in terms of people hawking magic horse horns.
The unicorn horns were, of course, elephant, walrus and narwhal tusks, none of
which species proliferated in the face of everyone’s best efforts to kill them
and chop their horns off. The Throne Chair of Denmark was made entirely of alicorn.
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| That's not a unicorn, it's a fish. Image credit: Chris Corwin |
The unicorn is widely used in heraldry and is the official national
animal of Scotland since the 12th century. The Unicorn of
Scotland symbolizes purity, joy, healing powers, life, power, and masculinity.
The royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom contains a unicorn in reference to
the union between Scotland and England.
Medieval traveler Marco Polo famously described a unicorn as
“very ugly brutes to look at,” with a “head like a wild boar’s” and a predilection
for “wallowing in mud and slime.” It was a rhinoceros.
In 1663, mayor Otto Von Guericke of Magdeburg used some
random bones from the Unicorn Cave in the Harz Mountains of Germany to
construct a unicorn skeleton. It had two legs and was part narwhal, part
mammoth and part woolly rhinoceros.
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| And part nightmare. Image Credit: Wilfried Wittkowsky |
In 2012, the North Korean government announced through the
Korean Central News Agency that they had found evidence of the unicorn ridden
by ancient Korean king Dongmyeong. The unicorn was found buried near a temple
in Pyongyang. The grave was conveniently labeled “Unicorn Lair.”
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| Seems legit. |
