a brief history of unicorns

A Brief History of Unicorns

     There’s something to be said for unicorns. (Especially for those named Chuchi, but that’s an entirely different story.) There’s a certain magical, childish appeal in them which I’m sure Freud would interpret as some kind of repressed sexual urge, what with the horn and the innocence and so on. But Freud had issues so we won’t talk about him.
     Unicorns, you see, are very ancient. It’s possible that the Indians and Arabs invented the unicorn as some kind of confusion with what a rhinoceros looked like – or the Greeks just messed up in translation. The ancient Greeks were so convinced that unicorns existed in faraway India that they included them in their natural history texts.
     The name “unicorn” comes from “one horn” in Latin, and that single horn is the unicorn’s distinguishing feature. It’s long and twisted, kind of like licorice only a lot harder to chew. In the Middle Ages, the horn was believed to neutralize poisons (this was due to stories about the use of unicorn horns in India) and to be a potent aphrodisiac.
     The unicorn was, of course, important throughout the Middle Ages. At first it was used as a symbol of salvation and Christ, and later as a symbol of chastity and fidelity. It appears in various pieces of religious art, as well as tapestries and lore. One famous series of tapestries are The Hunt for the Unicorn, in which a unicorn is hunted, tempted and trapped by a maiden, and is then found happily in captivity.
     The fact that the unicorn was so very rare (which is not surprising if you consider that it has probably not really existed) and that so many magical properties were attributed to it give the unicorn its longevity. The earliest record of a unicorn was two and a half millennia ago, although some would argue that prehistoric cave paintings also represent unicorns. Nowadays little girls still daydream about unicorns and magic princes. Of course, nowadays unicorns have also been commercialized like there’s no tomorrow. One particularly annoying example of this is that cartoon-slash-toy My Little Pony. I think I owned one or two of these toys way back in my youth (my youth, hah!), but, hey, I’m over it.
     All of this does make you wonder, though. Was there an actual basis for all this myth and folklore? Besides the rhinoceros, of course: what I mean is, was there an actual unicorn?
     In the Middle Ages, some people claimed to have found unicorn skeletons. Nowadays we say they are dinosaur skeletons, and mammoth skeletons, and that those people were thoroughly confused. Of course, a hundred years from now scientists may laugh at our ingenuity of thinking those bones belonged to furry elephants rather than belonging to those large, carnivorous Doppylangers, so really we can’t say much about the interpretation of million-year-old findings. (As a side note, up until the 19th century “dinosaurs” were called “dragons,” and it was on the egotistical impulse of some museum curator that the name was changed. That may have been completely irrelevant but I thought you should all know.)
     Whatever you choose to believe, the fact is that little children throughout the world will eternally laugh and giggle gleefully at the sight of a unicorn, little girls will hop excitedly when they receive toy unicorns, and modern fairy tales will employ the unicorn to symbolize strength and nobility and what-have-you. Maybe they were real, way back when. There’s a basis for everything (and that basis is usually discovered only thousands of years after being forgotten), and sometimes it’s hard to believe that the unicorn evolved from the misconception of a rhinoceros.
     But really, I know the question on all your minds.
     Do unicorns like mimes?