Unicorn

The unicorn is a legendary creature shaped like a horse, but slender and with a single — usually spiral — horn growing out of its forehead. Though the popular image of the unicorn is that of a white horse differing only in the horn, the traditional unicorn has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hoofs, which distinguish him from a horse. Marianna Mayer has observed (The Unicorn and the Lake), "The unicorn is the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears. In even the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful. He could be captured only by unfair means, and his single horn was said to neutralize poison."

Unicorns in prehistory

A cave painting in Lascaux, France depicts an animal with two straight horns emerging from its forehead. The simple perspective of the painting makes these two horns appear to be a single straight horn; since the species of the figure is otherwise unknown, it has received the moniker "the Unicorn". There have been unconfirmed reports of aboriginal paintings of unicorns at Namaqualand in southern Africa. http://www.strangeark.com/articles/unicorn.html. A passage of Bruce Chatwin's travel journal In Patagonia (1977) relates Chatwin's meeting a South American scientist who believed that unicorns were among South America's extinct megafauna of the Late Pleistocene, and that they were hunted out of existence by man in the 5th or 6th millennium BC. He told Chatwin, who later sought them out, about two aboriginal cave paintings of "unicorns" at Lago Posadas (Cerro de los Indios). Such possibilities, unconfirmed by fossils, would not have affected European legends.

Related Topics:
Cave painting - Lascaux - France - Namaqualand - Africa - Bruce Chatwin - Patagonia

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