The Legend and Life of Unicorns
The unicorn is a fabulous horse with a long horn on the forehead. Saint Ambrose interpreted it as the symbol of Christ. Since Antiquity and in various civilizations, unicorns have been given magical powers. The amulets representing the horn of this creature play a central role in the fields of folk medicine and superstition.
The life of a unicorn
At birth, the unicorn does not have a horn or it is very small. This attribute will reach its final size after ten years. The unicorn then leaves its birthplace and goes in search of another forest. Some sources attribute immortality to unicorns, while others stick to an extremely long lifespan. They flee men, because the latter chase them in order to seize their horn. They are only for people who believe in their existence and appear as simple horses to others. Only virgins are able to tame the wilderness of unicorns. It is said that they show themselves to young virgin girls seated on the edge of the forest, that they lay their heads on their knees and fall asleep. This confidence is sometimes betrayed: a young girl waits for the animal, and, once it is asleep, the hunters take it.
The legend of the unicorn
Our ancestors regularly discovered bones whose origin they could not determine. Their shape or size did not allow them to be attributed to known animals. The legend of the unicorn was surely born following such a discovery. The powder of its horn was said to have therapeutic powers. It is assumed that our predecessors often found, on the beaches, an object whose appearance resembled the made idea of what a unicorn horn should be. But it turns out that these finds were in fact the rostrals, rejected by the sea, of male narwhals.
Some cryptozoologists consider Procamptoceras brivatense, a species extinct a million years ago, to be the true ancestor of the unicorn. It was a kind of antelope with horns very strongly attached to each other, so that they could give the illusion that there was only one.
