The fascinating tale of 'unicorns' in Africa

David M Witelson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand, tells how the mixing of foreign beliefs with local ones in colonial South Africa hid the identity of a mysterious indigenous animal.

- David M Witelson

One-horned creatures are found in myths around the world. Although unicorns in different cultures have little to do with one another, they have multiple associations in European thought.

For example, the Roman natural historian, Pliny the Elder, wrote about unicorns in the first century AD.

In addition, the unicorn features in both medieval Christian and Celtic beliefs, and is Scotland’s national animal.

The unicorn’s prominence in European culture spread across the globe with colonisation. In Southern Africa, colonial European ideas encountered older indigenous beliefs about one-horned creatures. I’ve highlighted this in a recent research article about some of the region’s rock art.

UNICORNS IN AFRICA?

In the age of natural science, unicorns were gradually dismissed as mythical rather than biological creatures. But some thought that real animals with single horns might yet exist in the ‘unexplored wilds’ of Africa.

A famous search for such evidence was carried out by the English traveller, writer and politician Sir John Barrow (1764-1848). He had heard rumours about ‘unicorns’ from the colonists and local people he encountered on his Southern African travels.

One of these rumours was that unicorns were depicted in the rock paintings made by the indigenous San (Bushman) inhabitants of the region. Barrow searched unsuccessfully for them. Then, in mountains in what is now the Eastern Cape, he found and copied an image of a unicorn (see Figure 2). But many were sceptical of his claims; his published copy resembles a European engraving rather than a San rock painting.