Were Unicorns Always Sweet?

The modern image of the elegant, gentle unicorn is a relatively recent invention. Learn about the history of unicorn myths and legends in this episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain
Stuff lorn vogelbamb here. In the nineteen twenties, archaeologists in
South Asia unearthed remnants of the Indus Valley civilization. It
was a thriving advanced culture in present day Pakistan and
India that disappeared around nine b c. E. Among its
artifacts are seal stones, which are tablets inscribed with symbols

(00:25):
and drawings. The Indus Script, which has yet to be cracked,
but least one etching, is easily identified. A four legged
animal with a single spiral horn protruding from its forehead,
The Indus unicorn isn't the creature of modern fairy tales.
It looks a lot like a single horned bulb that
some suggest it's actually a regular two horned bull. Depicted

(00:46):
in profile, the horn is usually curved to some degree,
and the hoofs and tail are bovine. The carvings show
folds of skin along the face and throat, and a
snout that is sometimes shortened square and other times almost
lama like, and it does slightly resemble an extinct bull
like single horned creature called the Siberian unicorn, but whether

(01:07):
it's based in myth or reality the last unicorn, it
is not, but neither is it the least graceful unicorn
in history. Around three, Italian explorer Marco Polo described seeing
an animal with the head of a wild boar, the
hair of a buffalo, the feet of an elephant, and
a long black horn. A few early versions of the

(01:27):
unicorn resemble the luminous horse like beings of modern myth.
Descriptions of the creature go back thousands of years in folklore,
both Asian and European, as well as in naturalist catalogs
and by some Christian translations the Bible. All of these
unicorns have a single horn, four legs, and a tail,
and that's about it for universal characteristics or near universal.

(01:49):
One Indian myth tells of a unicorn boy, the son
of a human, and a one horned antelope, but that's
now liar. The unicorn myth may have originated in sightings
or reports of exotic animals like the rhinoceros or Narwall's,
or of typically two horned animals that were just missing one.
The American Museum of Natural History hypothesizes that Marco Polo's
unicorn was a Sumatran rhinoceros native to Southeast Asia. A

(02:13):
Roman naturalist planted the Elder who described unicorns around sev
may have been describing the Indian rhinoceros. Early Asian unicorns
varied widely in physical appearance. In Chinese and Japanese folklore,
the unicorn often has a scaly or multicolored coat, a
flesh covered horn, the body of a deer, and the
tail of an ox. The head was sometimes dragon like.

(02:36):
In some myths, it's a harmless, solitary creature whose presence
portends good. In others, it portends death, and the Japanese
unicorn has the mystical ability to detect evil doers, and
upon detection, drives its horn through their hearts. Persian myths
describe a unicorn with three hooves on each leg, varying legends,

(02:56):
painted as a shape shifter, a ferocious warrior resembling a rhinoceros,
or a peaceful deer like creature. It can purify water
by dipping its horn into the liquid, at which point
all female creatures in the vicinity become pregnant. Versions of
European unicorns have a similar purification ability. Their horns were
said to detect and counteract poisons by contact. The no

(03:18):
resulting pregnancies are reported there. The horn was also thought
to heal and protect from disease. Beliefs like this led
to a strong European market for unicorn horns, and in
the Middle Ages, opportunistic sailors started selling narwhal tusks as
unicorn horns. Before that, according to the American Museum of
Natural History, European unicorns often had stubby or colored horns,

(03:39):
but after that the horns were long, white and spiraled
like a narwhal tusk. Western unicorn mythology brings us somewhat
closer to the modern myth. European unicorns often have white coats,
a horse's body, the hoofs and beard of a goat,
and the tail of a lion. These unicorns are nearly
impossible to catch, a trait credited to strength or general lusiveness,

(04:00):
but they do have a weakness. A virgin woman can
lower the European unicorn into the open. She seems to
entrance the creature, who may lay its head in her
lap by some accounts, suckle at her breast, leaving itself
vulnerable to capture by hunters waiting out of sight. This
association with the Virgin, along with reported biblical mentions and
the abilities to heal and counteract poison, led the medieval

(04:23):
Christian Church to cast the unicorn as a christ figure.
The creature thus increasingly came to represent purity and nobility,
likely contributing to modern representations of the unicorn as benevolent, regal, graceful,
and white. How it became the sparkly, smiling creature of
popular culture, as seen in the works of Lisa Frank
My Little Pony and the Whole Unicorns Farting Rainbows meme

(04:45):
thing is not entirely clear, but it probably has to
do with commercial value. Kids are drawn to unicorns, their
parents buy them unicorns. Single horned cameras that impale bad
people with their horns likely wouldn't fly with the six
year old set, or at least their parents might object.
Where the Indus Valley unicorn fits into known unicorn legend

(05:06):
remains a mystery. That its image appears on more than
a thousand seals recovered by archaeologists suggests that it was
highly valued. It may have been sacred, It may have
even been real, But the Indus unicorn will keep its
secrets until science finds the key to this ancient code.
Today's episode was written by Julia Layton and produced by

(05:29):
Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other
mythic topics, visit our home planet, has Stuff works dot com.