Scientists found a fossilized skull of an ancient animal called Elasmotherium sibiricum, and it might be the closest thing to a real unicorn that ever existed. This animal lived around 30,000 years ago and looked more like a giant, furry rhinoceros than the graceful, horse-like unicorns we imagine today. It had a single, large horn on its forehead, but that’s where the similarities to unicorn myths end. This creature was enormous—twice as heavy as a giraffe! It likely roamed the grasslands of Siberia, using its horn for defense or digging for food. While it wasn’t the magical unicorn from legends, it’s fascinating to think that a real animal with one horn did walk the Earth long ago. Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/ Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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00:00We all love unicorns, those legendary creatures famous for their beauty.
00:05You're now thinking of a white horse with a spiraling horn on its forehead,
00:09and there's probably a rainbow somewhere nearby.
00:12But what are the origins of this image?
00:14And more importantly, can it be true?
00:17Well, yes and no.
00:20Let us start from the beginning.
00:22The name, it comes from Latin.
00:24Unicorn, translates as one horn.
00:28Today there is one land animal that fits the bill, the rhinoceros.
00:33The Greek name for a unicorn is Monoceros,
00:36which again means one horn, so it all fits neatly.
00:40But wait, isn't a unicorn a kind of horse?
00:44We need to call in science to resolve the issue.
00:47Scientists have discovered a skull of an animal
00:50that could have been the real unicorn and roamed the earth some 30,000 years ago.
00:55The animal resembled a huge, hairy rhinoceros,
00:59nothing like the image of a unicorn we have today.
01:02It was two times heavier than a giraffe,
01:05and its diet consisted of grass, a lot of grass.
01:09But the skull the scientists found in Central Asia revealed another surprising fact,
01:14the animal's age.
01:16Previous research pointed to the fact that the species went extinct 350,000 years ago.
01:23This meant that our ancestors never shared the same living space with this oversized rhinoceros.
01:29But the skull was dated much later.
01:32This dates the animal right around the time when humans were already there.
01:36This is where the legend begins.
01:39Imagine you're a prehistoric human who had just seen a unicorn.
01:43What would you do?
01:45It's not like you can take out a smartphone and snap a picture of it.
01:49No, you would probably paint it on a cave wall.
01:52But unicorns' drawings have survived to the present day.
01:55In France, there's an image of an animal that seems to have a single horn.
02:00It's in the Hall of the Bulls.
02:02All the other animals there have two wavy horns,
02:05but the mysterious spotted animal has two lines on its head.
02:09Do these double lines represent a single horn?
02:13Is this the famous unicorn?
02:15Perhaps.
02:17The name of the drawing is the unicorn panel.
02:21But images of unicorns don't only exist in cave drawings.
02:25In the Indus Valley, scientists have found various seals featuring a mythical animal with a single horn.
02:32Ancient Greek writers believed that unicorns lived in India.
02:36Back then, this region of the world was exotic to them.
02:39Although ancient Greeks never saw a unicorn, they had a pretty detailed description of the animal.
02:45They even recorded that the meat from this creature had a bitter taste.
02:50But was it a horse or a rhinoceros?
02:53Neither.
02:54For Greeks, the unicorn was a kind of a donkey.
02:57Go figure.
03:00In Chinese mythology, there's a similar creature.
03:03Its name translates into English, means male-female.
03:07The animal's description resembles a unicorn.
03:10A single horn on its forehead, the tail of an ox, and the body of a deer.
03:15It feeds on vegetation, just like the ancient rhinoceros from Central Asia.
03:20When the first giraffe was presented to the Ming Emperor, they described it as a unicorn.
03:26The ruler concluded that the animal definitely wasn't the mythical unicorn.
03:30But the legend lived on in that part of the world.
03:33The modern Japanese word for giraffe comes from the Chinese word for the unicorn-like creature.
03:40Ancient Persians also knew about the existence of unicorns.
03:44There's a picture of a unicorn in their capital city.
03:47But the fun part is that it has two large wings.
03:51Seems odd, but the Persians also never saw a unicorn in person.
03:55For them, like for the Greeks, it was a being that lived outside the known world.
04:00That's the reason why we're so fascinated by unicorns today.
04:05We find accounts of such creatures in the writings of Aristotle and even Julius Caesar.
04:11These famous people claimed that animals resembling unicorns lived in the forests of Germany.
04:16The modern image of a unicorn originated in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe.
04:23People back then had quite the imagination.
04:26They showed unicorns in book decorations.
04:29According to ancient scribes, this animal was ferocious.
04:32Its main enemy was the elephant.
04:34The people in medieval times thought highly of an animal they had never seen.
04:39It was quick and dangerous, so it needed to be hunted down.
04:43But how on earth do you lure a unicorn?
04:46With the help of a fair maiden, of course.
04:49This sounds strange today, but keep in mind that the Dark Ages were a peculiar period in history.
04:55Back then, doctors used leeches as legit medical treatment.
05:04The story gets wilder.
05:06A maiden would go inside a forest.
05:08A unicorn would spot her and jump inside her lap.
05:12After it fell asleep, hunters would appear.
05:15They would then capture the unicorn and take it to the king.
05:18But why were Europeans impressed by the unicorn?
05:22Because of its horn.
05:24They believed that it had magical power.
05:27A unicorn's horn could detect poison in food and drinks.
05:31When you ground it into a powder, the horn had the power to whiten teeth.
05:35These were just some of the magical traits given to a unicorn's horn.
05:39The folklore was so strong that Europeans even had a backup for the times they couldn't get their hands on a real horn.
05:47That must have happened quite often, and they used real narwhal horns as a replacement.
05:52These are whales with a large, tusk-like tooth coming from their mouth.
05:59In England, the unicorn was a symbol of something you could never see or catch.
06:04In the 16th and 17th centuries, it became associated with imagination.
06:09That's when the rainbow came into the picture.
06:12The Victorians were the first to connect the symbol of a rainbow to the unicorn.
06:16Its first appearance in fantasy literature was in the novel Through the Looking Glass for young readers.
06:22That was the sequel to Lewis Carroll's more famous work, Alice in Wonderland.
06:26The unicorn now stood for hope and purity.
06:31Still, there were no recorded sightings of the animal in real life.
06:35At least none that could be confirmed by science.
06:38In 1663, a German scientist claimed to have found a unicorn skeleton.
06:44The story seemed too good to be true, and it was.
06:47Someone made the skeleton from the bones of various animals and tried to pass it off as a unicorn.
06:53Today, the fake skeleton is displayed in the local Natural History Museum.
06:58The people weren't going to give up and searched for unicorns everywhere they went.
07:03In the 20th century, a British explorer discovered a new species in Africa.
07:08It had a small bump in the corner of its head.
07:12The public nicknamed the mysterious animal the African unicorn.
07:16But this wasn't true.
07:18Now we know this is an okapi.
07:20It's most closely related to a giraffe, but it looks like a zebra in the back part of its body.
07:26Its head resembles a deer.
07:28It's an impressive animal, but it's not even close to the elusive unicorn.
07:33One of the latest alleged sightings happened in 1991.
07:37An Austrian biologist reported seeing a unicorn in a forest in Germany.
07:42The legend says that these animals live in enchanted forests.
07:46But there's just one tiny issue.
07:48The total lack of physical evidence.
07:51In fact, there are historians who claim that unicorns never existed.
07:56The animal was simply a misinterpretation of cave drawings.
08:00Perhaps all those ancient images of unicorns were just two horned animals shown from the side.
08:05It could be so.
08:07It's hard to add the third dimension to a 2D image.
08:11But then, in 2013, the unicorn reappeared.
08:15Not the animal, though the word.
08:17An American venture capitalist came up with the term to refer to startup companies with a value of over $1 billion.
08:25She chose this word because these companies are as rare as the mythical animal.
08:29There are only a thousand of such enterprises in the whole world.
08:33And you've probably heard of the most famous one.
08:36Elon Musk's SpaceX.
08:42That's it for today.
08:43So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
08:48Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!