Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey brain Stuff. I'm Louren Vogelbaum, and this is a classic episode of the podcast. In this one, we trace the history of depictions of the unicorn, a mythological beast that's mostly associated with sparkles and rainbows today, but has not always been so sweet. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbomb.
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 nineteen hundred BCE. Among its artifacts are seal stones, which are tablets inscribed with symbols 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
spiraled horn protruding from its forehead. The Indus unicorn isn't the creature of modern fairy tales. It looks a lot like a single horned bull. Some suggest it's actually a regular two horned bull. Depicted 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 it's based in myth or reality, the last unicorn, it is not, but neither is it
the least graceful unicorn in history. Around thirteen hundred CE, 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. Few early versions of the 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. One Indian myth tells of a unicorn boy, the son of a human, and a one horned antelope, but that's an out liar. The unicorn myth may have originated in sightings or reports of exotic animals like the rhinoceros or narwhales, 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 Roman naturalist plane of the Elder, who described unicorns around seventy seven CE, 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. In some myths, it's a harmless, solitary creature whose presence portends good, it portends death, and the Japanese unicorn has the mystical ability to detect evildoers and upon detection, drives
its horn through their hearts. Persian myths describe a unicorn with three hoofs on each leg, varying legends, 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, though no 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 narwhale tusks as unicorn horns. Before that, according to the American Museum of Natural History, European unicorns often had stubby or colored horns, 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 elusiveness, but they do have a weakness. A virgin woman can
lure 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 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 thing is not entirely clear, but it probably has to do with commercial value. Kids are drawn to unicorns, their
parents by them. Unicorns. The single horned kimaras that impale bad people with their horns likely wouldn't fly with the six year old set, or at least their parents might objecked. Where the Indus Valley unicorn fits into known unicorn legend 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 is based on the article the Unicorn Ain't What It Used to be on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Julia Layton. Brain Stuff is production of Iyhart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and this
episode was produced by Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows