Legendary Unicorns
A Unicorn is often envisaged as an animal looking
like a horse with a single horn on its forehead. The unicorn was seen in early Mesopotamian artworks and mentioned in
the ancient myths of India and China. A passage in Ancient Greek literature by the historian
Ctesias spoke of a single-horned animal .He
described it as the size of a horse,
with a white body, blue eyes, and on its forehead was a long horn coloured red
at the pointed tip, black in the middle, and white at the base.There was a cave painting found in the Hall of the Bulls
at the Paleolithic Lascaux Cave showing a single horned creature. In 1866,
Vasily Radlov heard a legend among the
Yakuts of Siberia of a “huge black bull” killed by a single spear. The beast
was said to have a single horn so large that it had to be transported by sled. It
was thought to be a myth until fossils came to light in Siberia.
“Elasmotherium, also known as the Giant Rhinoceros or the
Giant Siberian Unicorn, is an extinct “species of rhino
that lived in the Eurasian area in the Late Pliocene and Pleistocene eras. They
have been documented from 2.6 million years ago, but the most recent fossils
come from around 29,000 years ago. The best known of this species, the E. sibiricum , was the size of a mammoth, covered
in hair, and is thought to have had a large horn protruding from its forehead,
hence the title “Siberian Unicorn”. According to early estimated descriptions,
the beast stood around 2 meters (6.56 ft.) tall, 4.5 meters (14.76 ft.) long,
and weighted an impressive 4 tonnes.
In March 2016, a beautifully preserved skull
was found in the Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan proving that the animal lived
until the Pleistocene era, some 29,000 years ago, instead of the previously
held belief that they had died out 350,000 years ago. Based on the size and
condition of the skull, it has been suggested that it was a very old male, but
it is uncertain how the beast died”
Source:
Ancient humans and these unicorns existed at the
same time and these ancient unicorns were probably hunted for food.The legends may
be a bit fanciful but uni-horned animals did exist and were horse like but
covered in fur .There is often some truth in legends and myths and
cryptozoologists can often find them useful.If ever you are told to disregard
old stories, remember the unicorn.
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