The reality of it is: there never really WAS a solid concept of what a unicorn was "supposed to be".
Throughout its mythological development, the unicorn has been a great many things --- savage or gentle, benign or malicious, good or evil. There are legends of kings having dreams where they are chased into a pit of death by a unicorn, others where unicorns purify stagnant pools with their horns or just by being nearby, others where they are an utterly destructive force to be feared instinctively.
Just as varied are the unicorn's physical descriptions. Whether you want to say the "real" unicorn was a gazelle, a bison, a horse or a rhino, you have virtually equal footing for your position. Pure white, as in the medieval tapestries, or multicolored as in Aristotle's description?
The only central tenet to all of the descriptions is "free-spirited". Oh, and the whole one-horn thing.
Perhaps the most "accurate" myth is also the oldest and least-well-known: in the Harappan civilization, trading tokens depicted the unicorn as a stocky, free-ranging ungulate. While some theorize that it's a gazelle and not a unicorn at all, the other horn being "hidden" by the use of the art-in-profile style, the same civilization was entirely capable of depicting depth-of-field in its other tokens.
We may never know exactly what they meant, because the Harappan language remains untranslated.
But what we DO know is that the depictions show garlands around its neck, and offerings of food in what looks to be a wedding-style feeder.
This could be the origin of the "gentled beast" and "wedding hunt" tales which surround unicorn mythology. A prospective groom would show his prowess, in both hunting and gentility, by luring the wedding feast's main course. The garlands, indicating the animal itself was revered to some extent (this being prior to development of the Indian karmatic system which ultimately psuedo-deifies cattle), could also suggest the animal was a rare one. Certainly, there are a number of beasts which have a similarity to the Harappan Unicorn, but none appears to be an exact match. The fact that the Harappans were very consistent with how they depicted their Unicorn also suggests they were either referencing a real one, or had developed a stylized ideal of it.
I consider it a possibility, though admittedly a remote one, that the "historical" unicorn may have been a one-horned ungulate, an offshoot of the gazelle family which had a single horn and greater mass for conducting devastating goring charges. This would have given it a limited advantage in terms of evolutionary development, so it may have occupied such a niche --- until driven to extinction by one of humanity's earliest examples of social hubris.
The reality of it is: there never really WAS a solid concept of what a unicorn was "supposed to be".
Throughout its mythological development, the unicorn has been a great many things --- savage or gentle, benign or malicious, good or evil. There are legends of kings having dreams where they are chased into a pit of death by a unicorn, others where unicorns purify stagnant pools with their horns or just by being nearby, others where they are an utterly destructive force to be feared instinctively.
Just as varied are the unicorn's physical descriptions. Whether you want to say the "real" unicorn was a gazelle, a bison, a horse or a rhino, you have virtually equal footing for your position. Pure white, as in the medieval tapestries, or multicolored as in Aristotle's description?
The only central tenet to all of the descriptions is "free-spirited". Oh, and the whole one-horn thing.
Perhaps the most "accurate" myth is also the oldest and least-well-known: in the Harappan civilization, trading tokens depicted the unicorn as a stocky, free-ranging ungulate. While some theorize that it's a gazelle and not a unicorn at all, the other horn being "hidden" by the use of the art-in-profile style, the same civilization was entirely capable of depicting depth-of-field in its other tokens.
We may never know exactly what they meant, because the Harappan language remains untranslated.
But what we DO know is that the depictions show garlands around its neck, and offerings of food in what looks to be a wedding-style feeder.
This could be the origin of the "gentled beast" and "wedding hunt" tales which surround unicorn mythology. A prospective groom would show his prowess, in both hunting and gentility, by luring the wedding feast's main course. The garlands, indicating the animal itself was revered to some extent (this being prior to development of the Indian karmatic system which ultimately psuedo-deifies cattle), could also suggest the animal was a rare one. Certainly, there are a number of beasts which have a similarity to the Harappan Unicorn, but none appears to be an exact match. The fact that the Harappans were very consistent with how they depicted their Unicorn also suggests they were either referencing a real one, or had developed a stylized ideal of it.
I consider it a possibility, though admittedly a remote one, that the "historical" unicorn may have been a one-horned ungulate, an offshoot of the gazelle family which had a single horn and greater mass for conducting devastating goring charges. This would have given it a limited advantage in terms of evolutionary development, so it may have occupied such a niche --- until driven to extinction by one of humanity's earliest examples of social hubris.