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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe

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Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I know you are dying to talk

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Speaker 1: about a movie that you rented this week. Maybe not

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Speaker 1: because it's as perfect as you remember though. Yeah, well look, luckily,

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Speaker 1: I don't know that I remembered it as being perfect,

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Speaker 1: at least not as a whole. I'm sorry if I misrepresented. No, no, no,

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Speaker 1: there are aspects of this film that are perfect. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're talking, of course about the five Ridley Scott film Legend,

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Speaker 1: which I imagine a number of you when you saw

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Speaker 1: that we were doing an episode, or of a pair

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Speaker 1: of episodes actually on unicorns, you probably thought about Legend. Now,

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Speaker 1: I think, in the tradition of Ridley Scott movies, not

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Speaker 1: all Ridley Scott movies, but a lot of them, this

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Speaker 1: is a great looking film that really under sells in

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Speaker 1: the plot and writing department. Oh yeah, it's it's tremendous looking.

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Speaker 1: Every frame of this film is just gorgeous and barroque

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Speaker 1: and slimy, and like you can you can feel it,

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Speaker 1: like there's it's a very moist film. I must say,

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Speaker 1: like every everybody, whether you're you know, an elf or

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Speaker 1: a goblin, whether you're a unicorn or a or a demon,

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Speaker 1: there's there, there's a moisteness every character that's a that's

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Speaker 1: a word. Okay. Uh. We should come back, by the

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Speaker 1: way someday to the question of why people hate the

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Speaker 1: word moist so much. You know what, you know that

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Speaker 1: thing about it's the most hated word in English. I

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Speaker 1: think there are reasons for well, I can I can

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Speaker 1: always say wet, a lot of wet unicorns. It's a

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Speaker 1: damp fantasy, it is. It is a damp, swampy world

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Speaker 1: that then is is frozen and you know it's It's

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Speaker 1: weird too that you mentioned the writing because William Hortzberg

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Speaker 1: wrote the screenplay and I who that is? So he

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Speaker 1: wrote a book called Falling Angel is kind of a

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Speaker 1: supernatural noir novel and uh, and I remember being a

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Speaker 1: pretty fun read. They made it into a movie called

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Speaker 1: Angel Heart, which I don't think I ever actually saw.

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Speaker 1: But but you know, William Horsburg was a legitimate writer, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, brought in on this project. But yeah, when

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Speaker 1: you think about legend or When I think about Legend,

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Speaker 1: what I think about are just the fabulous visuals. I

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Speaker 1: think about the terrific score by Tangerine Dream and Cruise

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Speaker 1: with sweaty hair, sweaty hair, Tom Cruise. Does it have

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Speaker 1: the young Lady from Ferris Bueller's Day Off in it? Yes?

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Speaker 1: It does. Yeah, because in addition to Tom Cruise, Tim

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Speaker 1: Curry as a darkness, it does have Mia sarah As

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Speaker 1: as the Lady, the Princess. Now a big thing about

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Speaker 1: the movie. I think one of the big reasons it

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Speaker 1: falls flat for me is that any movie you tell

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Speaker 1: me Tim Curry's in it, and I'm like, oh, okay,

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Speaker 1: so it's gonna be one of my favorite movies. But

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Speaker 1: Tim Curry, even though he's in fantastic demon makeup in this,

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Speaker 1: and they give him these home burns that are bigger

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Speaker 1: than his arms, uh, gigantic horns, this big wide red

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Speaker 1: devil face, the makeup does all of the acting and

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Speaker 1: there's not actually a whole lot for Tim Curry to

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Speaker 1: do in the movie. Yeah. That makeup, by the way,

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Speaker 1: that was Rob Boton coming off of John Carpenter's The Thing.

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Speaker 1: The monster effects in this Yeah, yeah, and uh, the

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Speaker 1: suit fits almost too well, because yeah, Tim Curry is

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Speaker 1: just kind of entombed within it. And and and in

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Speaker 1: his voice even sounds like it is constricted or even

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Speaker 1: you know, like electronically modulated a little. Now we've got

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Speaker 1: to get to the unicorns in the second. But one

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Speaker 1: more thing. There was a there was an actress you

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Speaker 1: were telling me about who's in the movie, who plays

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Speaker 1: one of the goblins. Yeah, yeah, there uh stage character

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Speaker 1: act actor by the name of Alice Playton. And she's

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Speaker 1: phenomenal as the goblin. Blicks Like, she really steals the

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Speaker 1: show as the scheming goblin underling of Tim Carey's Darkness character.

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Speaker 1: But doesn't the movie basically just start with It's kind

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Speaker 1: ofly the Empire strikes back, right, It starts with like

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Speaker 1: the bad guys chewing each other out. Yeah, yeah, in

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Speaker 1: a in a movie that is essentially sold as this

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Speaker 1: this fantasy adventure, it does begin in in the swampiest,

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Speaker 1: darkest um most hellish location in the film, essentially with

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Speaker 1: a villainous uh performance review for the goblin. How would

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Speaker 1: you rate your own communication skills this quarter? Yeah? And

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Speaker 1: then Blick says like, I think I'm doing well, Lord

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Speaker 1: and and Darkness says, what I would really like you

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Speaker 1: to do. I think this is an area of potential

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Speaker 1: growth for you is I would like for you to

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Speaker 1: get me a unicorn horn. Unicorn horn. Now, why does

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Speaker 1: Darkness want a unicorn horn in this fantasy movie? Well,

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Speaker 1: first of all, unicorns are bright and lovely, So what

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Speaker 1: else would you want to do but but heard a

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Speaker 1: unicorn if you're an awful demon. But also they are

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Speaker 1: traditionally magical items that command great power. Yeah, so even

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Speaker 1: the legend it might not actually be the most traditional

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Speaker 1: fantasy story, it does sort of convey the way we've

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Speaker 1: received these types of characters. So we've got the big

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Speaker 1: horn devil on the one hand, and he lives in

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Speaker 1: the pits of darkness with all these infernal flames and

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Speaker 1: goblins and everything around him. And then on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: you've got this ultimately wholly innocent beast, which is the unicorn.

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Speaker 1: And I want to as we talk about some unicorn

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Speaker 1: lord today. By the way, this is going to be

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Speaker 1: part one of a two part episode we're doing on unicorns,

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Speaker 1: because there's a lot of unicorn stuff out there. I

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Speaker 1: want us to think about why are unicorns considered so holy?

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Speaker 1: Like why is the unicorn the counterpart, the essential opposite

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Speaker 1: of the demonic spirit? Yeah? I mean why does darkness

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Speaker 1: and legends say they are each crowned with a single

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Speaker 1: horn reaching straight to heaven. It's more pinhead than darkness,

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Speaker 1: but you get the gist. It's not literally true though,

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Speaker 1: It's just like it's like a foot long horn. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I like the idea that it's kind of like

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Speaker 1: an antennae of holiness like it is. It is in

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Speaker 1: direct its getting a direct, like high quality WiFi signal

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Speaker 1: from the celestial world. I'm thinking of what Belloch says

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Speaker 1: in Raiders of the Lost Art it's a radio. We're

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Speaker 1: talking to God, it is. It is kind of Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So as we as we roll through this, uh these episodes,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to keep thinking about legend you likely out

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Speaker 1: there will as well. And luckily it's treatment of the

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Speaker 1: unicorn does match up with a number of the different

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Speaker 1: myths we're going to discuss folklore's and other fictional treatments.

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Speaker 1: Now we're going to try also to discuss some of

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Speaker 1: the science that can be connected to unicorn lore, and

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Speaker 1: we'll focus on that, especially in the more biological second

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Speaker 1: part episode here. But today we definitely wanted to start

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Speaker 1: by looking at the archaeological record and sort of the

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Speaker 1: myth and folklore history of what the one horned beast is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a there's a wonderful quote from Jorge Luis Borees

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Speaker 1: in his book The Book of Imaginary Beings, when which

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Speaker 1: he says, the first version of the unicorn is nearly

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Speaker 1: identical with the latest, which is which is interesting, Like

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Speaker 1: it is a it is a creature that has not

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Speaker 1: changed all that much in our various treatments. If you

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Speaker 1: look at the Unicornian legend, if you look at the

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Speaker 1: unicorn in any other films, or or it's or how

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Speaker 1: it appears on a lunch box that you might buy

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Speaker 1: at a at a store today, it's basically the same concept.

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Speaker 1: The concept has It has vary varying levels of symbolic meaning,

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Speaker 1: but at heart, all you have is a a horse

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Speaker 1: with a horn on its head. Well, I think maybe

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Speaker 1: we should start by going as far back as we

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Speaker 1: can to the first known unicorn. All right, let's do it.

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Speaker 1: Where are we riding off to, Joe, I think let's

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Speaker 1: ride off to the Indus Valley. So we're gonna talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the Indus Valley civilization, which was

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Speaker 1: a powerful Bronze Age civilization. It's often now cited as

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Speaker 1: one of this list of sort of the cradles of

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Speaker 1: civilization on Earth Earth. If you want to think about

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Speaker 1: areas where going back into ancient times, there have been

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Speaker 1: mass populations of humans practicing agriculture, settling in cities, living together.

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Speaker 1: You've got several areas, right, You've got the Yellow River Valley,

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Speaker 1: You've got the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, you've

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Speaker 1: got Mesoamerica. And another big one is the Indus Valley.

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Speaker 1: And that's going to be in areas that are now

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Speaker 1: encompassing parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and western and northern India

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Speaker 1: around the Indus River. So this civilization flourished from the

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Speaker 1: middle of the third millennium b C. About twenty hundred

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Speaker 1: until about nineteen hundred BC before falling off. And according

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Speaker 1: to Andrew Robinson, writing for Nature and two of the

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Speaker 1: largest cities in the Indus Valley civilization, known as Mahinjo

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Speaker 1: Daro and Harappa Or, which are both situated along the

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Speaker 1: Indus River or its tributaries, were highly advanced in terms

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Speaker 1: of civic infrastructure. He claims they actually had street design

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Speaker 1: and things like sewer drainage to rival the design of

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Speaker 1: twentieth century city. And so the civilization left behind tons

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Speaker 1: of beautiful artifacts for us. They had fabulous jewelry and

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Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. But then also, of course,

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Speaker 1: they had these artifacts known as seal stones, these carved stones,

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Speaker 1: including long, undeciphered writing and a famous style of ancient

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Speaker 1: unicorn depiction found on many seal stones throughout the culture,

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Speaker 1: including one that I've put a picture for us to

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Speaker 1: look at it in our notes here that it's this

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Speaker 1: four thousand year old stone from the Mohino Daro site.

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Speaker 1: And so what are we looking at here, Robert, Well,

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Speaker 1: we're definitely looking at an equine creature, I feel, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I look at I look at it, and I see

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Speaker 1: a creature with the basic body and proportions of of

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Speaker 1: a horse. It doesn't look very bovine. You could maybe

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Speaker 1: make a case that it's sort of an antelope. I

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Speaker 1: don't know. I I see I very much see the

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Speaker 1: hind quarters of a horse here. Yeah, it's got four legs,

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Speaker 1: it's clearly got hoofs. It's got a tail that looks

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Speaker 1: like it could be maybe a horsetail or maybe a

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Speaker 1: cow to ale of some kind. Uh, And then on

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Speaker 1: its head, its head goes up and then sloping at

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Speaker 1: a curve up away from the top of its head.

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Speaker 1: It has one horn. A picture of another stone from

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Speaker 1: Hinjo Dara, we have here very similar type animal. Right.

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Speaker 1: We see this sort of bull, sort of horse looking

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Speaker 1: animal that again has a tail. It's got four legs,

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Speaker 1: clearly clearly with hoofs. It's got some kind of artifact

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Speaker 1: in the lower left hand corner of the picture that

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Speaker 1: could be like an incense burning device or some kind

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Speaker 1: of religious artifact. It's got this undeciphered script up at

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Speaker 1: the top, and then it's again got this single horn

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Speaker 1: in profile. And so what people have been asking for

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Speaker 1: a long time since these these artifacts were first discovered

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Speaker 1: is what are these animals? They're often referred to as unicorns,

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Speaker 1: but we don't actually know what they are for sure.

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Speaker 1: Are they mythical one horned, four legged beasts that are

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Speaker 1: supposed to communicate some kind of you know, magical power,

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Speaker 1: or are they mundane two horned animals that only appear

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Speaker 1: one horned because they're in profile. That's an option, right,

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Speaker 1: Like one of the things we see in the carvings

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Speaker 1: depicting bees in ancient Egypt is sometimes it looks like

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Speaker 1: they've got the wrong numbers of legs or something. Oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: we talked about that in our our episode on the

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Speaker 1: Tears of Ray. Yeah, but it just seems to be

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Speaker 1: an issue of of perspective or or in how the

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Speaker 1: carvings come through to us. Yeah. Actually, it's worth noting

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Speaker 1: that in Frederick Schrader suggested that the the idea that

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Speaker 1: it is, the very idea of the unicorn might have

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Speaker 1: emerged from Greek interpretations of various uh Bas reliefs that

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Speaker 1: depicted profile depictions of bulls. Oh so that's that's amazing,

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Speaker 1: the idea that the unicorn could possibly have been an

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Speaker 1: outgrowth of misinterpretations of art, that art created the unicorn

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Speaker 1: because of the side perspective of animals that are supposed

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Speaker 1: to have two horns, but you can only see one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so it's kind of kind of getting too the idea

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Speaker 1: that the unicorn emerges from air. Now, is it an

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Speaker 1: error in artistic depiction? Is it an error in in interpretation? Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's hard to I guess, really, nail down, who bears

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Speaker 1: the blame of the unicorn. It's almost like imagining that

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Speaker 1: there is an artistic tradition somewhere in ancient culture that

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Speaker 1: generally draws people with their heads facing to the side

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Speaker 1: so that you can only see one of their eyes

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Speaker 1: and the other one is hidden on the other side

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Speaker 1: of the face, behind the bridge of the nose, and

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Speaker 1: that this type of artwork would lead to the mistaken

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Speaker 1: belief that this culture contains cycloptic people. Yeah, there's only

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Speaker 1: one eye in the picture. That must be what they

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Speaker 1: look like. Well, I think that's an interesting possibility to consider.

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Speaker 1: Another option to consider is that the animals depicted in

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Speaker 1: these carvings are actually supposed to be some real animal

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Speaker 1: that was actually one horned, but was mundane, wasn't some

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Speaker 1: kind of mythological beast. And that's the thing we'll have

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Speaker 1: to consider here. And I think this trilemma is going

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Speaker 1: to follow us throughout our our study of unicorns throughout

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Speaker 1: history and culture. You always have to ask, are you

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Speaker 1: dealing with a magical, non existent animal, a two horned,

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Speaker 1: real mundane animal that's being misinterpreted, or a real one

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Speaker 1: horned animal that is maybe being a little bit misdescribed. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: misdescription and misinterpretation I think are going to be a

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Speaker 1: common theme, whether we're talking about someone seeing again an

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Speaker 1: ancient carving and misinterpreting it, or someone repeating something they

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Speaker 1: heard about a rhinoceros. All right, let's take a quick

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Speaker 1: break and the when we come back, we will get

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Speaker 1: into the history of the western unicorn. Thank you, thank you.

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Speaker 1: All right, we're back. We're going to talk about, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the history of the western unicorn, which is is generally

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Speaker 1: what you're going to think of when you hear the

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Speaker 1: word unicorn. One of the things that I think is

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Speaker 1: going to be most interesting about the history of the

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Speaker 1: western unicorn is that generally the western unicorn does not

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Speaker 1: appear in ancient texts as a mythological beast, but as

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Speaker 1: a physical, mundane beast. Even though it's sometimes given a

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Speaker 1: lot of superlatives and powers and stuff, it's not described

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Speaker 1: as a part of myth, but more as a part

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Speaker 1: of natural history in the natural world. Yeah. Indeed, let's

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Speaker 1: look at some of these examples of individuals writing about

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Speaker 1: the unicorn. So Greek historian Ctessius wrote of unicorns in

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Speaker 1: the fifth century BC, describing them as white creatures like

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Speaker 1: asses with purple heads, blue eyes in a central horn

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Speaker 1: of red black and white. Oh, that's a lot more

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Speaker 1: colorful than the standard like bleach white unicorn we get

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Speaker 1: in Legend and other modern works. This is something you see.

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Speaker 1: They're gonna see time and time again. These older depictions

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Speaker 1: of unicorns are going to be pretty white, wild, wildly colored.

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Speaker 1: So it's not not only the fact that their form

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Speaker 1: is different, but also of their pigmentation. Well, I like

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Speaker 1: those unicorns better. Why can't we get the colorful ones back?

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Speaker 1: I guess we get them In Lisa frank yes um

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Speaker 1: now a Greek history orient Herodotus. He also wrote of

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Speaker 1: the unicorn, as did plenty of the elder centuries later.

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Speaker 1: And I actually have a quote from old plenty here

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Speaker 1: to read. He said, quote, The fiercest animal is the unicorn,

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Speaker 1: which in the rest of the body resembles a horse,

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Speaker 1: but in the head a stag, in the feet an elephant,

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Speaker 1: and in the tail a bore, and has a deep

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Speaker 1: bellow and a single black horn three ft long projecting

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Speaker 1: from the middle of the forehead. They say that it

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Speaker 1: is impossible to capture this animal alive. It cannot be

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Speaker 1: taken alive. Now, this does occur in a passage in

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Speaker 1: Plenty's Natural History, alongside other strange claims, where he's supposedly

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Speaker 1: talking about the animals that you could find in India,

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Speaker 1: and he says things like, quote the Orsean Indians hunt

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Speaker 1: down a kind of ape which has the body white

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Speaker 1: all over, as well as a very fierce animal called

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Speaker 1: the monicerus or monserras. And then he goes into the unicorn.

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Speaker 1: But wait a minute, this pale ape all over that

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Speaker 1: they hunt down in in India. That doesn't seem true either.

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Speaker 1: That's right, It's not like this is a mention of

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Speaker 1: the unicorn in a text that is otherwise um mundane.

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Speaker 1: Now there's so much there's so many fantastic and just

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Speaker 1: outright wrong tidbits throughout his work. Yeah, Plenty seems rather

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Speaker 1: promiscuous in his reporting, right. He will report all kinds

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Speaker 1: of things as real nature facts of the world. Yes,

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Speaker 1: second or third hand accounts from other travelers who have

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Speaker 1: actually seen these things, presumably, and then he's just collecting

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Speaker 1: them into his work or who might have been making

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Speaker 1: them up. I mean, it's hard to know. One more

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Speaker 1: thing about Plenty's description, though, is that so he says

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Speaker 1: that the unicorn of India makes a deep, lowing noise,

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Speaker 1: and when he describes the horn of the forehead, he

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Speaker 1: says that it's two cubits in length. Two cubits is

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Speaker 1: about one yard or about point nine meters. That is

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Speaker 1: a long horn. Usually the horns you see on the

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Speaker 1: modern unicorn depictions, I'd say, what are they about a foot? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they tend to be a lot shorter. But but when

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Speaker 1: you look at some of these for some of the

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Speaker 1: tapestries we're going to discuss, they also show a very

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Speaker 1: like javelin horn unicorn. Yeah. The second and third century

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Speaker 1: Roman author Alien wrote of the unicorn in the second

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Speaker 1: century see calling it the cardizan and of India, yellowish

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Speaker 1: red with a black horn and long mane, a fierce creature,

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Speaker 1: and this is a common feature of descriptions of the

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Speaker 1: unicorn and enemy of the lion. Oh yeah, I like

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Speaker 1: that you highlight that relationship because there are some other places,

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Speaker 1: especially I think I'm going to mention later in this

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Speaker 1: episode where animals that may have inspired the unicorn are

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Speaker 1: traditionally depicted as like alongside the lion and a kind

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Speaker 1: of pantheon of powerful animals. But I want to explore

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Speaker 1: just a little more of what alien says. So he

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Speaker 1: writes in his on the Nature of Animals India, quote

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Speaker 1: fosters asses with a single horn like that phrasing, but

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Speaker 1: he says that from these horns they make drinking vessels,

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Speaker 1: and if anyone puts a deadly poison in them and

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Speaker 1: the man drinks, the plot will do him no harm,

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Speaker 1: for it seems that the horn of both the horse

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Speaker 1: and of the ass is an antidote to the poison. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so this brings us to one of the most famous

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Speaker 1: legends about the western unicorn, especially that pervades all of

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Speaker 1: this literature, is that there's something magical and special about

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Speaker 1: the horn, not just in service of the animal's life,

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Speaker 1: but if you can take that horn off of it,

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Speaker 1: you can get some magic stuff out of it as well. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so the the idea that say that the unicorn could

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Speaker 1: dip its head and touch its horn to water, and

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Speaker 1: then that water would be made uh drinkable. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: then yeah, you could also potentially saw that puppy off,

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Speaker 1: work it into like your your your beer stein or something,

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Speaker 1: and then protect yourself from poisoning. Now, we mentioned a

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Speaker 1: little bit of this in our previous episode about poison

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Speaker 1: and the rhino horn. So I guess we'll link that

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Speaker 1: on the landing page here if you want to go

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Speaker 1: back and listen to that whole episode about uh drinking

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Speaker 1: vessels made out of rhinocerous horn that would believe to

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Speaker 1: purge poison from drinks or react with poison, who showed

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Speaker 1: that drink had been poisoned or something like that, and

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Speaker 1: the actual chemical argument for for these things actually working. Now,

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Speaker 1: one more account of unicorn I want to mention here.

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Speaker 1: This one comes to us uh in in the second

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Speaker 1: century see Greek text Physiologus. So this is essentially an

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Speaker 1: early beastiary, you know, a monster manual, if you will,

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Speaker 1: a tone of all the various exotic creatures one might

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Speaker 1: find in the world. And in it, the unknown author

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Speaker 1: describes how a unicorn may be captured by baiting it

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Speaker 1: with a virgin. Now that ties into the idea that

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Speaker 1: the unicorn cannot be captured alive, right, we mentioned that's

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Speaker 1: part of the legend. You can't capture it alive unless

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Speaker 1: apparently you use the special strategy, right, which again is

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Speaker 1: referenced in a legend when Blicks asked how to capture

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Speaker 1: the the unicorn, Uh Tim craze darkness says in no sense,

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Speaker 1: no sense, pronouncing it like he's never actually said the

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Speaker 1: word before. It doesn't quite feel right in his mouth. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: im I saying this right and no sense and something

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Speaker 1: like that. But so, how does this work? How do

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Speaker 1: you use a virgin to capture a unicorn? This is

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Speaker 1: the way your hey. Luis Borges summarizes it in his

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Speaker 1: book Imaginary Beings. Quote. It springs into the virgin's lap,

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Speaker 1: and she warms it with love and carries it off

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Speaker 1: to the Palace of Kings. Oh no, so she so,

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Speaker 1: because of her innocence and goodness and virtue, she can

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Speaker 1: lure the unicorn to herself, and then by pretending to

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Speaker 1: make friends with it, she can lead it to the

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Speaker 1: bad guys who want to get its horn. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is basically what we see happen in legend. The

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Speaker 1: idea that the unicorns is too pure for uh, for

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Speaker 1: the forces of darkness to uh to take on directly,

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Speaker 1: but they can essentially manipulate others uh so you know,

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Speaker 1: such as the virgin, into enabling its capture. That is cruel.

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Speaker 1: I don't like that. It's this, this, this trope. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna return to again and again that the unicorn is

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Speaker 1: this this, this holy creature but also essentially a wild creature,

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Speaker 1: very much a part of the natural world, and it

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Speaker 1: is it is too good for the human world. Like

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Speaker 1: all we're gonna try and do is hunt it, capture it,

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Speaker 1: probably and process it for its parts and eat it.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of this holy vessel that just shames is

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Speaker 1: for our treatment of nature. That definitely comes through, But

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Speaker 1: it's also a lot more than that, because as as

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Speaker 1: with anything you give, you give enough writers enough time,

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Speaker 1: they're going to interpret something as symbolic as the unicorn

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Speaker 1: in many different ways. And as Bohes points out, the

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Speaker 1: unicorn goes on to represent everything from uh, the Holy

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Speaker 1: ghost and Jesus Christ to mercury and uh and just

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Speaker 1: and just outright evil at different points as evil. Wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, now, I thought we were setting up this

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Speaker 1: thing where it's this holy, innocent creature. Well, but it

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Speaker 1: has this very phallic thing on its head. Is the

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Speaker 1: is the deal? That's true? People are always gonna see

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Speaker 1: is on some pre e petic kind of imagery, and

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Speaker 1: I guess that'll tend to make people assume that it

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Speaker 1: what somehow embodies lust or or masculinity or male fertility

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Speaker 1: in some way. Now, let's get back to what would

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Speaker 1: happen again. According to these legends, if you say opportunistically

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Speaker 1: broke off that pre epic horn, well then you have

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00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:20,119
Speaker 1: a fabulous ingredient for your various magical concoctions. Um. We

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Speaker 1: already touched on the whole poison rhino horn thing a

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Speaker 1: little bit. But I found more information on this from

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Speaker 1: Toxicology in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Philip

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Speaker 1: Wexler and featuring a paper titled Origin of Myths related

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Speaker 1: to Curative, anecdotal and other medicinal properties of animal horns

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Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages by Chris Lavers, and he refers

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Speaker 1: to the book uh Physica by Hildegarde of Bingen who

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Speaker 1: lived ten through eleven seventy nine, and this is what

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Speaker 1: he wrote about the unicorn horn. I hope we're going

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Speaker 1: to get some alchemy type stuff. Oh, yes, quote, pulverize

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Speaker 1: the liver of a unicorn. Yes, give this powder in

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Speaker 1: fat prepared with yolk of egg, and make it a

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Speaker 1: salve and there will be no leprosy. The leprosy comes,

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Speaker 1: of course, oftentimes from the black bile and from the

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Speaker 1: black stagnant blood. If you make a girdle from the

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Speaker 1: hide of the unicorn and gird yourself with it, no plague,

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Speaker 1: however severe and no fever will harm you. Also, if

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Speaker 1: you make shoes from the high and wear them, you

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Speaker 1: will always have sound feet, sound legs, and sound joints,

424
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:33,439
Speaker 1: and also will no passion wants harm you while you

425
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:35,879
Speaker 1: were wearing them. Well, this is just bad advice in

426
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:39,920
Speaker 1: every possible way. This is like factually wrong and morally bad.

427
00:23:40,040 --> 00:23:42,399
Speaker 1: That's the worst kind of advice. And yet there is

428
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 1: also a sense of use every part of the unicorn, right,

429
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:47,679
Speaker 1: don't just saw it's horn off and run off and

430
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:50,520
Speaker 1: you know, into the darkness with it. Use the rest

431
00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:54,000
Speaker 1: of the animal as well. Um. He also recommends placing

432
00:23:54,040 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 1: the hoof of a unicorn under a plate or cup

433
00:23:56,920 --> 00:23:59,719
Speaker 1: to cause boiling in the presence of poison. Okay, so

434
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:01,560
Speaker 1: this brings us back to the idea that it will

435
00:24:01,600 --> 00:24:05,240
Speaker 1: somehow make poison not poisonous anymore, or alert you to

436
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:08,200
Speaker 1: the presence of poison. Now, I'm talking about the Middle

437
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:11,399
Speaker 1: Ages here and in me evil Europe in particular, certainly,

438
00:24:11,400 --> 00:24:13,400
Speaker 1: there are a number of classical texts that they could

439
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:15,919
Speaker 1: draw upon to learn about the unicorn. But what about

440
00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:19,520
Speaker 1: the most essential text of the time. What about the

441
00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:23,240
Speaker 1: Holy Bible? What does it tell us about the unicorn.

442
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:26,280
Speaker 1: Let's have a reading from the King James Bible, shall we.

443
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:28,920
Speaker 1: Let's do it so first, I want to read Isaiah

444
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: thirty four six to seven. The sword of the Lord

445
00:24:32,359 --> 00:24:35,480
Speaker 1: is filled with blood. It is made fat with fatness,

446
00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the

447
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:41,480
Speaker 1: fat of the kidneys of rams. For the Lord hath

448
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:45,040
Speaker 1: a sacrifice to Bozrah and a great slaughter in the

449
00:24:45,119 --> 00:24:49,040
Speaker 1: land of Dumia. And the unicorns shall come down with them,

450
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:52,120
Speaker 1: and the bullocks with the bulls, and their land shall

451
00:24:52,160 --> 00:24:55,960
Speaker 1: be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.

452
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:00,760
Speaker 1: I have a lot of questions about that. This this fat,

453
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:03,920
Speaker 1: fleshy sword that the Lord is wielding here, and then

454
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: the flock of unicorns that that that seemed to to

455
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:10,439
Speaker 1: flock down amidst all the bloodshed. Well, yeah, so this

456
00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 1: is apparently saying that, so there's gonna be a great

457
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:17,399
Speaker 1: smiting of many things, including all of your unicorns, and

458
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:19,520
Speaker 1: the dust is going to be you know, made fat

459
00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: with their fatness. I do not remember this passage from

460
00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:25,120
Speaker 1: Sunday School. I want to read you another one. Let's

461
00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:28,160
Speaker 1: go to job Job thirty nine nine through twelve. Now

462
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: this is part of the there's sort of these long

463
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:34,040
Speaker 1: didactic poetic sections of job where there are a lot

464
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:37,159
Speaker 1: of sort of repeated phrases in the sentences of like

465
00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:39,480
Speaker 1: is this gonna happen? Are you going to do this?

466
00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: Can you do this? Yeah? Basically the whole idea of

467
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:45,240
Speaker 1: being who do you think you are? Job right? So

468
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:49,119
Speaker 1: here's one starting at verse nine. Will the unicorn be

469
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: willing to serve thee? Or abide by thy crib? Canst

470
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 1: thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow?

471
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,800
Speaker 1: Or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou

472
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:01,680
Speaker 1: trust him because his strength is great? Or wilt thou

473
00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:04,640
Speaker 1: leave thy labor to him? Wilt thou believe him that

474
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:07,520
Speaker 1: he will bring home thy seed and gather it into

475
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 1: thy barn. Now this sounds an awful lot like this

476
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: unicorn is being reduced to agricultural labor. Here, well, it's

477
00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:17,160
Speaker 1: saying like, are you what you think You're gonna get

478
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:20,840
Speaker 1: a unicorn and reduce it to agricultural labor? Think again, buddy,

479
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:23,639
Speaker 1: and these are, by no means the only references to

480
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,800
Speaker 1: unicorns in the King James version of the Bible. There,

481
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: I think I was looking at. I don't want to

482
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: be wrong about this, but I'm I think I'm gonna

483
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 1: say about nine references to unicorns in the King James Bible.

484
00:26:35,800 --> 00:26:38,680
Speaker 1: And on one hand, that shouldn't be super surprising because

485
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:41,639
Speaker 1: the Bible contains other passages that appear to be references

486
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: to mythical beasts. Right, We've got the Behemoth. Whether or

487
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: not that's a mythical beast, not quite sure. Definitely, the

488
00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:50,359
Speaker 1: Leviathan in the Book of Job is supposed to be

489
00:26:50,359 --> 00:26:53,720
Speaker 1: a mythical beast because the Leviathan pretty clearly is a

490
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: fire breathing dragon sea monster. If you doubt this, check

491
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: out Job forty nine to twenty one. Quote out of

492
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 1: his mouth go burning lamps and sparks of fire leap

493
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: out out of his nostrils, goeth smoke as out of

494
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: a seething pot or cauldron. His breath kindleth coals, and

495
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: a flame goeth out of his mouth. Yeah he could.

496
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:16,320
Speaker 1: They couldn't. The author here couldn't be anymore clear. Yeah,

497
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 1: this is a fire breathing dragon. But at the same time,

498
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 1: I think there's a very good case to be made

499
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:23,880
Speaker 1: that the word in the Bible that the King James

500
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: translators interpreted as unicorn was unfortunately not actually a reference

501
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: to a mythical beast like the Leviathan, but a mistranslation

502
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:36,639
Speaker 1: of a word for a normal, mundane animal, but in

503
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: a very interesting way. So let's chase that lead for

504
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: a second, Robert, Let's have a reading from Deuteronomy thirty three.

505
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,680
Speaker 1: Let's start right in the middle of thirty three, verse sixteen.

506
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: Let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph, and

507
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 1: upon the top of the head of him that was

508
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:57,399
Speaker 1: separated from his brethren. His glory is like the firstling

509
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 1: of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns

510
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 1: of unicorns. With them, he shall push the people together

511
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: to the ends of the earth. And they are the

512
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:09,680
Speaker 1: ten thousands of ephre Um, and they are the thousands

513
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:13,359
Speaker 1: of Manassa. Now wait a second, some red kind of wrong.

514
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 1: They're right because the horns of unicorns like horns plural.

515
00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:20,360
Speaker 1: Now you might be able to read that as well.

516
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 1: You've got a big mess of unicorns, and as a group,

517
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:25,639
Speaker 1: there are horns plural, But that's not actually what the

518
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 1: passage says. Right. His glory is like the firstling of

519
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:34,280
Speaker 1: his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns.

520
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 1: With them, he shall push the people together to the

521
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 1: ends of the earth. So it sounds like he's describing

522
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 1: a pair of horns or multiple horns, who knows, maybe

523
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:46,479
Speaker 1: even seven horns, a bunch of horns on a single

524
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: animal head as a point of comparison for the strength

525
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: of a single person. So what the heck is going

526
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 1: on here? If this is supposed to be a unicorn, Yeah,

527
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:57,000
Speaker 1: I'm feeling I'm I'm picturing something more like a bull

528
00:28:57,080 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 1: or a gazelle now, yeah, And I think you might

529
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:02,720
Speaker 1: be onto something there, Roberts. So what we have to

530
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: consider here is that the translators who produced the King

531
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: James version of the Bible were working with a lot

532
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:12,080
Speaker 1: of limitations. These were scholars who, you know, studied ancient

533
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 1: languages and ancient manuscripts to try to make the best

534
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:17,760
Speaker 1: translation they could. But they were working at the beginning

535
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 1: of the seventeenth century, right, it was like the first

536
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: decade of the seventeenth century, and they had this colossal

537
00:29:23,360 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: job of taking this huge tradition of different manuscripts written

538
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 1: over hundreds of years, primarily in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic,

539
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:34,880
Speaker 1: and translating them into a Bible for the English speaking

540
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:37,800
Speaker 1: world to read, and there were lots of They were

541
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 1: all kinds of problems, right. For one thing, these translators

542
00:29:41,120 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: had access to lower quality, more corrupted manuscripts than the

543
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: translators of more recent versions. But also these Greek, Hebrew

544
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 1: and Aramaic texts, as you might imagine, were full of

545
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: ancient words and expressions that the King James translators did

546
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 1: not know what to make of. And how would they

547
00:29:57,640 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: have right, I mean, they were working in the beginning

548
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:03,600
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, but they did their best. So sometimes

549
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:08,719
Speaker 1: their best involved unnecessary invocation of mythological beasts. So the

550
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: word that the King James translators rendered as unicorn is

551
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 1: in fact the Hebrew word h m. And at the

552
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 1: beginning of the seventeenth century, nobody in this English speaking

553
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: committee knew what rem meant. And today actually scholars are

554
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: not certain that they know for sure what Rem was

555
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 1: supposed to mean, but they think they've got a pretty

556
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 1: good guess. So one question to begin with, if the

557
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: King James translators didn't know what was meant by M.

558
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 1: Why did they choose unicorn and not something else? Why

559
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:39,600
Speaker 1: didn't they just say, like, I don't know, uh, cow

560
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 1: or what? Just something random? Yeah, because there's nothing. It

561
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:44,880
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like there's anything really in the text. It

562
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:47,320
Speaker 1: demands the creature have one horn. It just needs to

563
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: be a like a strong, powerful beast. Right, So, so

564
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 1: the the the existence of a single horn uh is

565
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: not important, not in the text itself, but here's where

566
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 1: it comes in. So I've read the U N S. E.

567
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:03,680
Speaker 1: Chapel Hill. Biblical scholar bart Erman speculate that the reason

568
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 1: the King James translators rendered h M as unicorn may

569
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 1: have been that they were taking their cue from an

570
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,960
Speaker 1: earlier translation of the Bible, not into English, obviously, but

571
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,640
Speaker 1: into Greek, the Greek Septuagint. And this is the Greek

572
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 1: translation of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, which

573
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: had existed since ancient times. It had been around since

574
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: the Ptolemaic period, I think. And in the Septuagint, the

575
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: Hebrew word rem is translated into the Greek word mono

576
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: kairos mono meaning one and karos meaning horn. Now, that

577
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 1: actually just pushes the question farther back, like why did

578
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 1: these scholars in the Greek translation translate rem as monocros

579
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 1: and there We don't know for sure, but one possibility

580
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: could be that they were thinking that it was a

581
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: reference to the rhinoceros. That's right, that would make sense.

582
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: But later scholars have come up with a pretty good

583
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,440
Speaker 1: idea of what the Hebrew red m actually meant. And

584
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: my main source here was a summary in a book

585
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: called Sacred Monsters, Mysterious and Mythical Creatures of Scripture, Talmud

586
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:07,720
Speaker 1: and Midrash by Natan Slifkin, who is a rabbi, but

587
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: he also he deals with zoological sciences and stuff, so

588
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 1: he interprets a lot of references to animals and beasts

589
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: in the Old Testament and the Talmud and other Jewish

590
00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 1: texts in light of zoological science. And so what Slifkin

591
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:24,640
Speaker 1: says is that modern scholars have suggested that the realm

592
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:29,479
Speaker 1: of the Hebrew Bible actually refers to the orox bos

593
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 1: primogenious and these were the wild ancestors of modern domesticated cattle.

594
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: They lived throughout Europe, Asia and North Africa, and they

595
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: had these huge forward and upward facing horns, perfect for goring,

596
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 1: and the descriptions in the Bible are also a very

597
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:50,320
Speaker 1: nice fit with their reputation as extremely aggressive and powerful.

598
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:53,720
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to face down in Orax in the wild. Now,

599
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: the Oracs are extinct today, right, but they still existed

600
00:32:56,960 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 1: in the ancient Near East when these texts were written,

601
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: and in fact we think the last of them died

602
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 1: out in Poland in sixty seven. But Sliftin points out

603
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 1: that there are ancient Near Eastern engravings of Orex, specifically

604
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: in the Assyrian context, bearing the name Remu, a close

605
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 1: cognate for the Hebrew rem So there's good reason for

606
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:21,800
Speaker 1: thinking m probably meant Ox and that works right, And

607
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 1: then the context of the passages, it is a mighty

608
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:28,040
Speaker 1: wild beast, yes, And they truly were mighty because they

609
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: were huge, like they could stand about one point eight

610
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: meters or about six feet tall at the shoulders. So imagine,

611
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're talking about a wild bull with

612
00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 1: gigantic horns that was aggressive and stubborn and probably taller

613
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: than you were, maybe not taller than you, Robert, but

614
00:33:43,200 --> 00:33:46,480
Speaker 1: that's that's that's still too much broader than me. Yea

615
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:49,280
Speaker 1: far more intimidating than me, if you were to happen

616
00:33:49,320 --> 00:33:51,959
Speaker 1: to upon one in a field. Yeah, and so this

617
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:53,720
Speaker 1: makes me think about a thing when when you read

618
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: about the ancient Middle East and all of the bull

619
00:33:56,760 --> 00:33:59,720
Speaker 1: gods and bull headed deities of the ancient world and

620
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: the power they were supposed to embody, you might think,

621
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: why imagine all of this raw, holy, scary kind of

622
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 1: power in essentially a domesticated animal that you eat or

623
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:14,719
Speaker 1: milk or used for farm labor. You know, like, what

624
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: why is that? Why? Why a bull? Why not some

625
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:20,919
Speaker 1: scarier wild animal. But I would suggest when you think

626
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: about what bulls meant to the people of the ancient world,

627
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: they you know, they had begun domesticating breeds of cattle.

628
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:29,719
Speaker 1: But you should also think about the context of the

629
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: primordial bull, the wild primordial bull, the roux, which was

630
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 1: a mighty and threatening beast. Wow, it was. It was

631
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 1: essentially like the god cow of of the ancient world. Yeah,

632
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: and you see it, You see it inspiring the imagination

633
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:47,400
Speaker 1: of you know, pre pre civilization people's right even in

634
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: the Paleolithic period or exappear in cave art. Like if

635
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 1: you think about the paintings at Lasco in southwestern France.

636
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: These are giant cave paintings and they're amazing. They're from

637
00:34:57,040 --> 00:35:00,360
Speaker 1: the Upper Paleolithic, the Stone Age, and the most famous

638
00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: section of the cave at Lascaux is known as the

639
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:06,240
Speaker 1: Hall of the Bulls, which shows these four black orcs.

640
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:08,920
Speaker 1: One of the bulls depicted is more than five meters

641
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: long or about seventeen feet, which it was gigantic for

642
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:17,240
Speaker 1: a cave painting. Wow. So so ultimately in the Bible

643
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: we're seeing references not to the unicorn from legend, but

644
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: to a beast that looks more like Tim Curry's character

645
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 1: from legend. I think that's a good point in comparison.

646
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a reason that this became the largest

647
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 1: single animal ever discovered in cave art. These were fearsome, powerful,

648
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:38,279
Speaker 1: revered animals. Hunting them was a serious task. You know

649
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: that they probably were hunted by Paleolithic humans, but that

650
00:35:41,960 --> 00:35:44,880
Speaker 1: was a dangerous endeavor, right. These are strong, powerful, They

651
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 1: could inspire Biblical terror, and I mentioned earlier about keeping

652
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: the company of lions. Orcs are also depicted in the

653
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 1: ancient Babylonian wonder the Ishtar Gate, which I bet you've

654
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 1: probably seen pictures of before, Robert. Oh yeah, this is

655
00:35:56,960 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: the big blue one right, yeah, yeah, with the arch

656
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:04,720
Speaker 1: and uh so it depicts three animals lions, dragons, and rax.

657
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 1: The kind of company this primordial bull kept. Also, I

658
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:10,839
Speaker 1: want to add one last bit of interesting news about

659
00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:14,320
Speaker 1: the oracs from recent years. Um, some conservationists actually believe

660
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:17,319
Speaker 1: that the oracs were a sort of keystone species in

661
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 1: Europe before it went extinct that was crucial for maintaining

662
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 1: European biodiversity and the wildlife environments. And as a result,

663
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 1: there's actually been an effort to back breed a version

664
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 1: of the wild oracx that could be released into the

665
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:32,919
Speaker 1: wild as grazers to help Europe sort of maintain its

666
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:36,280
Speaker 1: original ecosystems. Because this was this would be a creature

667
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:39,919
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that would fill the basic niche that uh

668
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 1: the the American buffalo would have filled, right, something kind

669
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 1: of like that. I mean, you can't make a one

670
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: to one comparison, but yeah, because it is something that

671
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:50,359
Speaker 1: is a herb before it is a grazer. But it's

672
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: also not something that's easily picked off by any wolf.

673
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:55,360
Speaker 1: For what I mean, this is a huge, powerful, animal.

674
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 1: But anyway, coming back to the Bible translations, most modern

675
00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:01,840
Speaker 1: Bible translation and since the King James for example, to

676
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:04,719
Speaker 1: anyone you pick up today, the new revised standard version

677
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: is probably gonna render those unicorn passages not as unicorn

678
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: but as wild ox or something like that. So it

679
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:14,359
Speaker 1: really does kind of transform it. But it can still

680
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: be pretty interesting if you picture the orex in your mind,

681
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: in all of its powerful glory, is the wild ox

682
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 1: willing to serve you? Will it spend the night at

683
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:26,200
Speaker 1: your crib? From job or in Isaiah, wild oxen shall

684
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 1: fall with them and young steers with the mighty bulls,

685
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,239
Speaker 1: and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their

686
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:36,200
Speaker 1: soil made rich with fat, or that Deuteronomy passage a

687
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: firstborn bull, majesty is his His horns are the horns

688
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 1: of a wild ox. With them, he gores the people's,

689
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:46,279
Speaker 1: driving them to the ends of the earth. You know,

690
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:48,879
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating in all of this that it also

691
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:53,320
Speaker 1: ends up mirroring Peter Beagles the Last Unicorn. Oh yeah,

692
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 1: this of course is the fantasy novel later made into

693
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 1: the two animated film from and can embass But in

694
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:06,319
Speaker 1: that we see the red bull as the as as

695
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,160
Speaker 1: the nemesis of the unicorns that has driven them all

696
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:12,440
Speaker 1: into the sea for the evil king. And it is

697
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:14,239
Speaker 1: very much in keeping with the idea of an arc

698
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 1: as opposed to your your just standard domesticated cow. I

699
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:21,280
Speaker 1: think about the rax often whenever I think about the minotaur.

700
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 1: We need to we need to sort of bring back

701
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:27,959
Speaker 1: the scariness of the primordial cattle instead of just thinking

702
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 1: about it as a thing you grill, Yeah, it's it's

703
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:34,080
Speaker 1: regal nature is really lost when you you look at

704
00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 1: footage of say, you know, modern cattle rearing practices and

705
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:39,879
Speaker 1: say the American Midwest. Yeah, well, I mean it's one

706
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:42,840
Speaker 1: of those many products of agriculture, right, And agriculture is

707
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:46,239
Speaker 1: sort of the process of of taking this wild thing

708
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:48,960
Speaker 1: that lives for its own purposes and bending it to

709
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: human purposes, capturing the unicorn really right, and processing it

710
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:58,759
Speaker 1: for its liver Pulu. One more option I want to

711
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 1: mention is that there could be other things. You know

712
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:03,719
Speaker 1: that reference in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the

713
00:39:03,719 --> 00:39:07,680
Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible. Uh, it's got this monocross idea. Sliff Can

714
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 1: mentions this could also maybe refer to the Orix. I

715
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 1: know that sounds a lot like Orax, which we've just

716
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 1: been talking about. But this is rix O r y x,

717
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: which is a kind of antelope with straight horns that

718
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: in profile could easily look like one single horn. And

719
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:26,279
Speaker 1: we're back to the idea of animals depicted in profile again,

720
00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: like with the Indus River carvings. Is that maybe something

721
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:33,240
Speaker 1: like the Orax with this one horn depicted in profile,

722
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: because the two horns line up very evenly right or

723
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: or seen at a distance, a silhouette. One more fun

724
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:41,400
Speaker 1: bit from the King James issue h that we should do,

725
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:42,759
Speaker 1: and then I guess we'll take a break and move

726
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 1: on to some other things, is that there's another beast

727
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:49,240
Speaker 1: that is I think somewhere between the Leviathan and the unicorn,

728
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:52,239
Speaker 1: meaning it's a might be a reference to a mythological beast,

729
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:54,320
Speaker 1: or it might be a reference to a normal animal,

730
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: not quite clear, which is the Bible's reference to satyrs.

731
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:01,520
Speaker 1: I had no idea. So Isaiah thirteen twenty one and

732
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:03,719
Speaker 1: the King James version, we're in the middle of this

733
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 1: prophecy about how Babylon is going to be destroyed like

734
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: Sodom and go Mora and the destruction will be so

735
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 1: terrible that no human will ever be able to inhabit Babylon, again,

736
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:17,240
Speaker 1: picking up the quote quote but wild beasts of the desert,

737
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:20,080
Speaker 1: She'll lie there, and their houses shall be full of

738
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 1: doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and sadders shall

739
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 1: dance there. Oh man. Uh So, for anyone who needs

740
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:31,880
Speaker 1: a reminder, when we're talking about statyers, we're talking about

741
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:37,600
Speaker 1: the human goat hybrids of of of Greek and Roman tradition.

742
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:40,000
Speaker 1: They were known as fawns in the Roman tradition, and

743
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 1: they were attended to Silenus and Bacchus, and they tended

744
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 1: to chase nymphs around and are generally depicted as just

745
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:51,360
Speaker 1: the embodiments of drunken mail lettery and aggressive sexuality. There's,

746
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:55,319
Speaker 1: I mean, there's really a robust artistic tradition depicting them.

747
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 1: I think of them in a much darker set of motifs,

748
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:01,200
Speaker 1: because I primarily think of them now in the context

749
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:04,839
Speaker 1: of the Great God Pan, which is much darker than

750
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: them just being kind of uncontrollable party dude. But in

751
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:11,360
Speaker 1: the paintings you often depict them, they're also often depicted

752
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:13,479
Speaker 1: as just yeah, kind of out of control party dudes,

753
00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: which can be pretty terrifying in its own right. Now,

754
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:19,520
Speaker 1: in terms of how satyrs are treated in the Christian tradition, Uh,

755
00:41:19,640 --> 00:41:22,840
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting because in hindsight it seems destined to

756
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 1: be classified as a demon. Right, Yeah, it's just your

757
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 1: like a satanic Satanic goat man. And it's essentially in

758
00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:32,560
Speaker 1: a legend, the darkness character is like just a a

759
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:36,439
Speaker 1: satyr on steroids. Oh, you're talking about the movie Legend.

760
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: For second, I meant in legend, not know in legend

761
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: and in parenthesis this is probably going to be a

762
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 1: problem for listeners. Sorry, but but the thing is, when

763
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: you start looking around at a medieval examples of treatment

764
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 1: of the statter, you you can find it both ways.

765
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 1: So in Liz Herbert McAvoy's Monstrous Masculinities in Julian of

766
00:41:57,600 --> 00:41:59,680
Speaker 1: Nor which is a Revelation of Love and the Book

767
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:02,400
Speaker 1: of my A Drey of Kemp, she points out that

768
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: there's this individual by the name of Guide This Shaaliac,

769
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:09,919
Speaker 1: a late Middle Ages authority on disease, and he drew

770
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:14,359
Speaker 1: explicit comparisons between lepers and satyrs. He cites that they

771
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: both have stinking breath, prominent brows, paw like hands, and

772
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 1: I assume this might be due to decomposition of tissues

773
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:25,560
Speaker 1: due to leprosy, as well as a ruddy complexion, and

774
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: most importantly black blemishes and black blood. Well, this sounds

775
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: very prejudiced. Yeah. Meanwhile, I was looking at Sarah Sally's

776
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,759
Speaker 1: Idols and Semilacra and she points out that in the

777
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: fourteenth century work Mandovel's Travels, which is the one of

778
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:45,160
Speaker 1: these these books of just you know, this character traveling

779
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: the world and seeing all the fantastic sites of the

780
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:50,720
Speaker 1: of of of the larger world. Okay, so that reads

781
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 1: to me as full of lies. Yes, that is it

782
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 1: is full of lies. But but in it there are

783
00:42:56,560 --> 00:42:59,280
Speaker 1: sayers that pop up, and they're described as simply quote

784
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,279
Speaker 1: a deadly creatures such as God had formed. So they

785
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: were monsters, they were wonders in their own way, but

786
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: they were part of the natural order of things. So

787
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:09,040
Speaker 1: again we get back to this idea that many of

788
00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: these older texts, the unicorn is not depicted as something holy,

789
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:15,879
Speaker 1: in supernatural or unnatural in any way, shape or form.

790
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:18,759
Speaker 1: It is uh, it is noteworthy, but it is a

791
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,080
Speaker 1: part of the world. Wait did Mandeville have something to

792
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 1: say about unicorns. Oh, yes, yes he did. He wrote,

793
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 1: of the unicorns in that country, be many white elephants

794
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 1: without number, and of unicorns, and of lions of many manners,

795
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 1: and many of such beasts that I have told before,

796
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 1: and of many other hideous beasts without number. Oh so

797
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 1: he's one of these guys who's always reminding you the

798
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:43,080
Speaker 1: great stories he told you before. Yes, and there there's

799
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:46,000
Speaker 1: so many hasn't even gotten to yet. But I guess

800
00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 1: that's kind of what we do to write. We've talked

801
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: about you've heard us talk about it in a previous episode,

802
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 1: and we could totally do an episode on this as well.

803
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: We're the modern Mandevell's. I hope we're not lying about

804
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:59,960
Speaker 1: our travels in But to to go back to the

805
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 1: idea of the sadders in the Bible, So you've got

806
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:04,799
Speaker 1: the idea of sadders, you know your town is going

807
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:06,800
Speaker 1: to be destroyed, or your city is gonna be destroyed.

808
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 1: You're gonna have owls the satders are gonna dance there.

809
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 1: In the New American Standard Bible version of that verse,

810
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:16,160
Speaker 1: it's translated very differently. It's rendered not as a mythological beast,

811
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 1: but just a reference to a mundane animal. So it says, quote,

812
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: but desert creatures will lie down there, and their house

813
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 1: will be full of owls. Ostriches also were there, and

814
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: shaggy goats will frolic there, which is an amazing bit

815
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:31,560
Speaker 1: of trash talk. You're saying, your city is going to

816
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:33,840
Speaker 1: be destroyed when I'm through with you. Your house is

817
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:35,879
Speaker 1: going to be full of owls. Your kitchen is gonna

818
00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 1: be full of shaggy goats. Yeah, but it's it's it's

819
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 1: a different type of Uh, it's a different kind of doom,

820
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:45,239
Speaker 1: isn't it. You know. It's like you can imagine like

821
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:48,080
Speaker 1: the fall of Las Vegas and then all that's left

822
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: in this the apocalyptic wasteland or satyrs and that like

823
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:52,560
Speaker 1: that makes sense. You know, they're the only ones who

824
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:55,480
Speaker 1: can really get by there. But if it's just shaggy goats,

825
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: it's it's a little less sad. It's like even the

826
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:01,720
Speaker 1: even the sin of your of your city has washed away,

827
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 1: and now it's just really your ruins are just a

828
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: place that goats want her around. I like the owls,

829
00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:10,080
Speaker 1: the owls, and that's like somehow that's very savage it's like,

830
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 1: oh no, not owls. What it reminds me of Futurama.

831
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 1: In all the Futurama episodes that they depict owls as

832
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 1: infesting the cities of the future, apparently playing on some

833
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:25,680
Speaker 1: politicians comment that if if al Gore got his way,

834
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 1: that that owls would infest the country. The owls are

835
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,480
Speaker 1: not what they seem. Yeah, anyway, I think we should

836
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:34,360
Speaker 1: take another quick break and when we come back we

837
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:39,719
Speaker 1: will discuss more wonderful unicorn lore. Thank thank alright, we're

838
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:42,720
Speaker 1: back now, Robert. Earlier we were talking about the idea

839
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,719
Speaker 1: that the unicorn, in at least modern fiction, but also

840
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:47,799
Speaker 1: a lot of this ancient law as well, seems to

841
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 1: be a symbol of innocence, of holiness, of purity, of rectitude. Right,

842
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:56,040
Speaker 1: I mean, before you get to the idea that it's

843
00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:59,759
Speaker 1: also sort of a lustful or sinful creature, you've got

844
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:03,760
Speaker 1: this very sinless unicorn. That's right, it's a holy, blameless creature.

845
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: I would tend to think that the Christian tradition would

846
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:08,960
Speaker 1: do something with that, Yes, and what they do is

847
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 1: is rather interesting. So yeah, it again becomes a tradition

848
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 1: in these beast areas that the unicorn can be baited

849
00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:16,799
Speaker 1: with a virgin, it's drawn to her purity, and then

850
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: it can be captured and taken to a way to

851
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:21,160
Speaker 1: a king. And so we can look to a twelve

852
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:25,400
Speaker 1: twenty Anglo Saxon beast herey and see, uh, from there

853
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 1: an emergent symbolism, that of the capture of the unicorn

854
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: as the betrayal of Christ. Whoa that? Yeah, I didn't

855
00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:37,360
Speaker 1: see that coming. Yeah, so this is what Carol Rose

856
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: writes about. Carol Rose compiled uh two different sort of

857
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: modern beastiaries. Or she talks about folklore and legend and

858
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:51,000
Speaker 1: mythology of monsters and dragons or fairies and other supernatural creatures.

859
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: But the comparison here would be that that Christ was

860
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 1: betrayed by Judas Iscariot right, who betrayed him with a

861
00:46:57,080 --> 00:47:00,359
Speaker 1: kiss and lead the Roman authorities to capture or him

862
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 1: and turn him over to punch his pilot. Yeah, so

863
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:06,279
Speaker 1: Rose rights. From that time the unicorn seems to have

864
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: acquired a graceful piety that the earlier descriptions had lacked.

865
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:12,759
Speaker 1: And so we see this again and again we see

866
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 1: this idea of that the unicorn is a symbol of,

867
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:19,000
Speaker 1: among other things, Christ and his purity, like this thing

868
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 1: that was too good for the world, and so of

869
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:24,760
Speaker 1: course we ended up betraying it and killing it, betrayed

870
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 1: by a kiss. Yeah. And uh, it's also I find this, this, this, uh,

871
00:47:29,560 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: this this extra amusing because you'll see occasional memes these

872
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: days that depict Jesus writing a unicorn or in the

873
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:39,399
Speaker 1: presence of unicorns, and to humorous effect, as if the

874
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 1: the idea of Jesus Christ and the unicorns sharing the

875
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 1: same space is just completely ridiculous and so ridiculous that

876
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 1: it's just just absurd. But but really it's it's a

877
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 1: perfectly natural pairing. They have a history together, they have

878
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 1: a past. One has been used to represent the other. Yeah,

879
00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:59,360
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised at all if some piece

880
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 1: of medieval art somewhere had Jesus writing into Jerusalem illustrated

881
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:06,440
Speaker 1: not as on a donkey, but as on a unicorn.

882
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:10,399
Speaker 1: Now we've mentioned that the Travels of of Sir John

883
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:14,640
Speaker 1: Mandeville from the fourteenth century also another important text that

884
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:18,760
Speaker 1: mentions unicorns, that of Marco Polo. The Travels of Marco

885
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:21,919
Speaker 1: Polo okay, or the Travels of Marco Polo similarly full

886
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: of lies. Well, a lot has been written on on

887
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: on the journeys of Marco po But in terms of

888
00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:32,120
Speaker 1: the unicorn that he describes, uh, most of the interpretations

889
00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 1: I've I've come across seemed to say this was a rhinoceros. Okay,

890
00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 1: So again we come back to the rhino, as we

891
00:48:38,680 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: do time and time again. And of course we've already

892
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 1: mentioned the lion popping up in the company of the unicorn,

893
00:48:44,719 --> 00:48:47,720
Speaker 1: and uh and and this, this idea of lion unicorn

894
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:51,439
Speaker 1: drama was well established by the sixteenth century. That's when

895
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:55,360
Speaker 1: English poet Edmund Spencer wrote of it in The Fairy Queen,

896
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: and this popularized the idea a new and so you

897
00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:02,719
Speaker 1: see lion and unicor horn iconography. Um, you know is

898
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: as as a free control from that point onward. Interesting,

899
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 1: now we mentioned tapestries earlier. There are actually two sets

900
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 1: of tapestries that that we should mention here, uh, the

901
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:17,279
Speaker 1: first of which is the Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries.

902
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:20,879
Speaker 1: It's a series of six tapestries woven in Flanders around

903
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:25,120
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, and they each feature a lion, a unicorn,

904
00:49:25,239 --> 00:49:29,000
Speaker 1: and a beautiful woman, with the woman always between the two.

905
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:32,840
Speaker 1: Five of the tapestries seem to depict the five senses

906
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:36,040
Speaker 1: of touch, taste, smell, hearing, in sight, while a sixth

907
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 1: is labeled a Monsieur dessier to my only desire. And

908
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 1: this one is is different because this is this is weird, right,

909
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:44,719
Speaker 1: because we've already hit all the senses and then there's

910
00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: this additional tapestry um which will we'll get to here.

911
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: So these were believed the appropriate reception, right, But I

912
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 1: have I have read some arguments along those lines. But

913
00:49:56,040 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 1: these tapestries are believed to have been commissioned by a

914
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:02,400
Speaker 1: member of the prosper suh le Vista family in the

915
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: late fifteenth century. Now, there's an excellent episode of CBC's

916
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 1: Ideas podcast about these tapestries titled The Lady in the

917
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: Unicorn from I recommend everyone check that out. I'll try

918
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:16,280
Speaker 1: and include a link to it on the landing page

919
00:50:16,520 --> 00:50:18,480
Speaker 1: for this episode at seft to Bow your Mind dot com.

920
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 1: But they spent a lot of time talking about the

921
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:25,680
Speaker 1: history of these tapestries and the symbolism and the differences

922
00:50:26,239 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 1: between them. For instance, in Touch, the unicorn is smaller

923
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:34,840
Speaker 1: and more ghatish in appearance, like it basically looks like

924
00:50:34,880 --> 00:50:39,839
Speaker 1: a goat unicorn with the beard. It's also small and stature. Also,

925
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 1: the woman is touching its horns in a highly suggestive manner.

926
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:46,839
Speaker 1: But then in the other paintings the unicorn is more

927
00:50:47,480 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: equine in appearance, though it still has the ghatish beard

928
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: and that sixth the painting to my only desire, this

929
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:55,279
Speaker 1: one still remains a bit of a mystery. And you

930
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:58,440
Speaker 1: have these various theories on what it is referring to, uh,

931
00:50:58,680 --> 00:51:01,840
Speaker 1: including les you know, I phenomenon. But the one that

932
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: that I like the most is that it concerns human

933
00:51:04,680 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 1: obsession with material possessions. Oh that's weird, like greed as

934
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 1: a perceptive sense, I guess, uh. I mean you can

935
00:51:12,360 --> 00:51:13,719
Speaker 1: you look at the painting and you see that, yes,

936
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:17,759
Speaker 1: the woman is holding a chest of jewels, and almost comically,

937
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 1: the lion is about to eat the fabric of the

938
00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:23,560
Speaker 1: pavilion or the tent. Uh, and the unicorn is not

939
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: early doing much. So the unicorn is just basically in

940
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:28,600
Speaker 1: the same posture that you'll find it in another one

941
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 1: of the tapestries. Oh well, I want to learn more

942
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah. Well, like I say that that episode

943
00:51:33,680 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 1: of ideas is is really fascinating. Now another set of

944
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:41,920
Speaker 1: unicorn tapestries is that that we know is that the

945
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:44,800
Speaker 1: Hunt of the Unicorn. Now, these were probably woven in

946
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 1: Brussels in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries, and

947
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:50,720
Speaker 1: they feature a common theme from art of that period,

948
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:55,399
Speaker 1: Nobleman hunting the Unicorn. And these are incidentally the same

949
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:57,759
Speaker 1: paintings brought to life in the opening credits of that

950
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:01,320
Speaker 1: two adaptation of The Last Unicorn. You know, can I

951
00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 1: confess I've never seen it? Should I see it? You should?

952
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:06,960
Speaker 1: It's good. It's uh. It's all set to the music

953
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:11,040
Speaker 1: of America America as in like Ventura Highway and yeah,

954
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:14,239
Speaker 1: horse with no Name, Yeah, horse with one Horn, Horse

955
00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:16,239
Speaker 1: with one horn through the desert on a horse with

956
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:19,080
Speaker 1: one horn. They had. There's some catchy America tunes in

957
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:22,799
Speaker 1: that the theme song especially uh huh, yeah, Wait a minute,

958
00:52:22,880 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 1: is it about a horse with one horn or is

959
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:27,520
Speaker 1: it something else? It's about the Last Unicorn the theme song.

960
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:31,600
Speaker 1: This is custom music. They didn't just grab America original

961
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 1: music America. Yeah, they didn't just grab it off the shelf.

962
00:52:34,719 --> 00:52:38,320
Speaker 1: They commissioned it. They're they're part of the fabric of

963
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 1: the film. So these seven tapestries tell the story of

964
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:46,920
Speaker 1: nobleman hunting the the the unicorn, but is pointed out

965
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:52,600
Speaker 1: by Helmet Nickel in a nineteen two Metropolitan Museum Journal article,

966
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:57,279
Speaker 1: it's difficult to establish the exact narrative sequence because two

967
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 1: of the tapestries are in a different style. So then

968
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:04,560
Speaker 1: there's several different reasons for this, most of them entailing

969
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 1: the work of two different artists, sort of like you

970
00:53:08,239 --> 00:53:12,200
Speaker 1: want to complete tapestry set of the Hunting of the Unicorn,

971
00:53:12,719 --> 00:53:16,239
Speaker 1: but you only have four available from this artist and

972
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:18,040
Speaker 1: then two available from this one, so you just sort

973
00:53:18,040 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 1: of mash them together, and well, now it tells a

974
00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: complete story. Well what's the story. Well, it seems to

975
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:26,520
Speaker 1: go together like this. There's the start of the hunt.

976
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:29,920
Speaker 1: There's the unicorn of the fountain, the unicorn attacked, the

977
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:33,800
Speaker 1: unicorn defending himself, the unicorn is captured by the Virgin,

978
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:36,719
Speaker 1: the unicorn is killed and brought to the castle. And

979
00:53:36,760 --> 00:53:41,399
Speaker 1: then finally the unicorn in captivity and no longer dead. Huh,

980
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:43,440
Speaker 1: so they kill it, they bring it back to the castle,

981
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:46,440
Speaker 1: and then it resurrects. Well, basically, again, if you think

982
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 1: about the the idea of this capture of the unicorn

983
00:53:49,719 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 1: um as as the story of Christ. I mean, what

984
00:53:52,600 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 1: happens with Christ. Christ is is betrayed. Uh, he is,

985
00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:59,320
Speaker 1: he has put on across, he has he has executed essentially,

986
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:02,960
Speaker 1: but then he returns to life, he has resurrected, and

987
00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 1: in that believers find hope. That's interesting. Now, one thing

988
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 1: I would notice is that the unicorn in captivity in

989
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 1: the versions of this I'm looking at it's in a pin,

990
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:14,359
Speaker 1: it's fenced in, it can't escape, but it still has

991
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:17,319
Speaker 1: its horn. So I'm at least seeing the horn has

992
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: not been harvested, right, the liver has presumably not been pulverized,

993
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:24,760
Speaker 1: So there's hope in that as well. Now we mentioned

994
00:54:24,800 --> 00:54:27,719
Speaker 1: earlier that we have Eastern unicorns as well. Oh yeah,

995
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:30,399
Speaker 1: And and it makes sense, right because on one hand,

996
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 1: it's not that crazy of an idea. It seems like

997
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:36,800
Speaker 1: a complete no brainer that a culture would eventually imagine

998
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:41,160
Speaker 1: a creature with a single horn or other protrusion coming

999
00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:43,880
Speaker 1: out of its head. Well, especially since there actually have

1000
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:46,759
Speaker 1: been some versions of animals like this that exist on

1001
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:49,719
Speaker 1: Earth exactly, you know, because we get into we get

1002
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: into areas of of Indian Asia that either currently have

1003
00:54:53,920 --> 00:54:57,759
Speaker 1: rhinoceros or have had species of rhinoceros in the past. Yeah,

1004
00:54:57,800 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking, hey, wait a minute, don't rhinocero

1005
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:02,440
Speaker 1: says have two horns, you need to think about the

1006
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:07,160
Speaker 1: Indian rhinoce right, So many African rhinoceroses have two horns,

1007
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:10,239
Speaker 1: but the Indian rhinoceros has one nose horns, right, and

1008
00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:12,880
Speaker 1: is a It is a very strange looking beast if

1009
00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:16,800
Speaker 1: you were accustomed to only seeing their their African cousins.

1010
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:19,479
Speaker 1: And so we have to think about this particular rhino

1011
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:22,120
Speaker 1: when we look at things like the Chinese kaylin, which

1012
00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:24,960
Speaker 1: in its form and function varies depending on who, when

1013
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:27,680
Speaker 1: and where the tale is told, but it is one

1014
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:30,840
Speaker 1: of the celestial beings alongside the dragon, the tortoise, and

1015
00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 1: the and the finglong or the Chinese phoenix. Um think

1016
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:37,560
Speaker 1: of a deer with the head of a Chinese dragon

1017
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:40,880
Speaker 1: with one to three fleshy horns or antlers in some

1018
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:43,719
Speaker 1: cases scales the who's of a horse, the tail of

1019
00:55:43,760 --> 00:55:48,000
Speaker 1: an ox with bunches of of of of of spotted

1020
00:55:48,120 --> 00:55:52,239
Speaker 1: and spiral whirls on its hide, And that's essentially the

1021
00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:55,480
Speaker 1: kailin And in some cases it also fulfills the role

1022
00:55:55,520 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: of a Western stork, bringing talented sons with potential for

1023
00:55:59,560 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 1: success civil service careers to families. Um. It's also depicted

1024
00:56:03,680 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: as a gentle, musical, vegetarian creature or just a symbol

1025
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,880
Speaker 1: of auspicious birth, of longevity and of balanced n and

1026
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:14,239
Speaker 1: yan and and again there's an argument that these are

1027
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 1: essentially based on descriptions of of of a rhinoceros. They're

1028
00:56:19,040 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 1: also uh. There's also this idea that it is based

1029
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:24,319
Speaker 1: on the description of an African giraffe. Giraffe, how would

1030
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:29,480
Speaker 1: that be? Well, in fourteen fourteen, Unich Commander shing Ho

1031
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 1: led the ming fleet to the coast of Africa, and

1032
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 1: Uh supposedly returned with a giraffe as a tribute to

1033
00:56:36,280 --> 00:56:40,320
Speaker 1: Emperor yung Low. And the Somali name for giraffe is

1034
00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:44,279
Speaker 1: apparently guran, which might have sounded like quillen uh the

1035
00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:46,880
Speaker 1: and that this is the name for the emblem of

1036
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:51,400
Speaker 1: justice uh in Mandarin, so uh, that's uh. Again, you

1037
00:56:51,480 --> 00:56:56,080
Speaker 1: get into this complex web of of how much of

1038
00:56:56,160 --> 00:56:59,839
Speaker 1: it is is observations of an actual animal, how much

1039
00:56:59,880 --> 00:57:05,360
Speaker 1: of it is just retellings and misinterpretations of those observations,

1040
00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:07,160
Speaker 1: And then how much of it is just pure myth making,

1041
00:57:07,200 --> 00:57:09,920
Speaker 1: how much of it is just the the pure magic

1042
00:57:10,120 --> 00:57:13,120
Speaker 1: of religious thinking. I know I've mentioned this a lot

1043
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:14,920
Speaker 1: on the podcast before, but I think a lot of

1044
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:18,680
Speaker 1: times we tend to under sell the role of pure

1045
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:22,440
Speaker 1: myth making in in coming up with these kinds of

1046
00:57:22,520 --> 00:57:25,040
Speaker 1: beasts because we want there to be a mystery to solve,

1047
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:28,160
Speaker 1: right we it's more fun to think about, Okay, what

1048
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:31,000
Speaker 1: could have inspired? And I like playing that game too.

1049
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:34,280
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about it with the first Fossil Hunters,

1050
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:38,600
Speaker 1: right at the idea of maybe seeing ancient triceratops fossils

1051
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 1: inspired the idea of a griffin or something like that,

1052
00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 1: and all these types of ideas which I think are

1053
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 1: very interesting and worth talking about. But it's also sort

1054
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:50,680
Speaker 1: of driven of our need to create a causation narrative,

1055
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 1: where we need to say people saw something and that

1056
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:56,000
Speaker 1: led to them dreaming up this kind of animal. But

1057
00:57:56,880 --> 00:57:59,120
Speaker 1: when you think about the writers of today, writers of

1058
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:02,040
Speaker 1: today invent all kinds of mythological animals. They come out

1059
00:58:02,040 --> 00:58:05,000
Speaker 1: of their imagination, they met, you know, they put together

1060
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:08,880
Speaker 1: the characteristics of one creature with characteristics or of another,

1061
00:58:09,320 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 1: or they to a monstrous dimension, change the size of

1062
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:15,000
Speaker 1: some features of an animal, or you know, something like that.

1063
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:18,280
Speaker 1: It often just comes out of the imagination. And I

1064
00:58:18,360 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 1: think we always have to keep in mind that ancient

1065
00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:24,640
Speaker 1: people were using their imagination to indeed indeed and uh.

1066
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:27,400
Speaker 1: And of course we see other variations of this of

1067
00:58:27,480 --> 00:58:29,880
Speaker 1: this Eastern unicorn or I almost hate to call it

1068
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:33,520
Speaker 1: an Eastern unicorn, but just suffice to say Eastern magical

1069
00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:38,040
Speaker 1: creatures that had something like a single horn in some depictions.

1070
00:58:38,520 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: So you have the Japanese kiran. You have the Po,

1071
00:58:41,640 --> 00:58:44,760
Speaker 1: which was a Mongolian creature that was depicted as a

1072
00:58:44,840 --> 00:58:47,960
Speaker 1: beautiful white horse with a black tail, tiger claws, and

1073
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:51,560
Speaker 1: then a horn on its muzzle. You have the High Chai,

1074
00:58:51,880 --> 00:58:54,400
Speaker 1: which is which had the body of a horse reddish

1075
00:58:54,720 --> 00:58:58,120
Speaker 1: yellow for a single black horn. And I like this

1076
00:58:58,200 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 1: it was able to detect the guilty and the innocent,

1077
00:59:01,160 --> 00:59:04,200
Speaker 1: presumably by pointing its horn at them. That's what how

1078
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 1: I like to interpret it. There's the two Jushin, which

1079
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:11,160
Speaker 1: was more like a lion unicorn. Uh. There were Tibetan

1080
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:14,120
Speaker 1: unicorns as well. Uh. There were at least three different

1081
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:17,960
Speaker 1: versions of this that carry the sero and the Soapo,

1082
00:59:18,600 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 1: And of course these are just a few examples, but

1083
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 1: I think they do help to drive home the idea

1084
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:26,920
Speaker 1: that we kind of have a global fascination with animals

1085
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:29,360
Speaker 1: that have a single horn growing out of their head,

1086
00:59:29,680 --> 00:59:31,640
Speaker 1: based again in part on the fact that we have

1087
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:36,520
Speaker 1: real animals that have this basical, basic anatomical feature, and

1088
00:59:36,680 --> 00:59:40,000
Speaker 1: then we have all of these these imagined forms as well.

1089
00:59:41,040 --> 00:59:44,280
Speaker 1: Why do we find unicorns so fascinating? Like, why is

1090
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:48,360
Speaker 1: this such a fascinating mythological creature. It's just a horse

1091
00:59:48,640 --> 00:59:51,560
Speaker 1: or a goat or something with one horn on its head.

1092
00:59:51,840 --> 00:59:54,600
Speaker 1: That's not even all that hard to imagine. It's not

1093
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 1: like it's not like a pegasus, Like a horse with

1094
00:59:57,480 --> 01:00:00,640
Speaker 1: wings is really weird. You know, you just you wouldn't

1095
01:00:00,760 --> 01:00:02,760
Speaker 1: ever expect to see that in nature. You know, when

1096
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:05,440
Speaker 1: you see it, it's something magical. But I don't know.

1097
01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:09,160
Speaker 1: Animals have horns. Four legged animals have horns. Lots of

1098
01:00:09,200 --> 01:00:11,880
Speaker 1: four legged animals have two horns, but if they have

1099
01:00:12,120 --> 01:00:15,560
Speaker 1: one horn. Now we are in Lisa frank dream time,

1100
01:00:16,120 --> 01:00:18,960
Speaker 1: and it's We're gonna cure all of our diseases and

1101
01:00:19,040 --> 01:00:21,360
Speaker 1: we're gonna expose all of our sins and folly in

1102
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:24,520
Speaker 1: comparison to the holiness and purity of this beautiful creature.

1103
01:00:24,800 --> 01:00:27,600
Speaker 1: What is the deal with one horn that's so special? Yeah,

1104
01:00:27,880 --> 01:00:30,000
Speaker 1: it's it doesn't even really evolve much as an idea.

1105
01:00:30,200 --> 01:00:32,000
Speaker 1: It comes back to what bo has said about the

1106
01:00:32,040 --> 01:00:35,000
Speaker 1: first unicorn essentially being the same as the latest unicorn.

1107
01:00:35,280 --> 01:00:37,600
Speaker 1: I at least like that the earlier unicorns had a

1108
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:41,320
Speaker 1: lot more colors. I think the Lisa Frank idea is good.

1109
01:00:41,760 --> 01:00:44,240
Speaker 1: I think there need to be unicorns with like purple

1110
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:47,440
Speaker 1: and black and red and orange that this like snow

1111
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:51,240
Speaker 1: white unicorn, you know, doesn't doesn't really do it for me. Yeah,

1112
01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:53,200
Speaker 1: we need some other equestrian colors in there, you know,

1113
01:00:53,240 --> 01:00:56,320
Speaker 1: we need some dapples and grays. Uh, you know, all

1114
01:00:56,480 --> 01:01:00,480
Speaker 1: all the horse colors, unicorn zebras, Yeah, why not, why not,

1115
01:01:00,720 --> 01:01:04,840
Speaker 1: let's have it, giraffe coloration. It all works, all right.

1116
01:01:04,920 --> 01:01:07,160
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Basically, just a lot of

1117
01:01:07,560 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: consideration of myth of history and uh and symbolism surrounding

1118
01:01:13,600 --> 01:01:15,880
Speaker 1: the unicorn. But we are going to come back and

1119
01:01:15,920 --> 01:01:18,480
Speaker 1: do a second episode that is going to deal with

1120
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:22,240
Speaker 1: some of the the very real organisms in our natural

1121
01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:26,520
Speaker 1: world that are essentially unicorns as well as some prehistoric

1122
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:30,520
Speaker 1: examples of single horned animals, and we will definitely be

1123
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:35,120
Speaker 1: discussing unicorns created by a wizard all right. In the meantime,

1124
01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:36,960
Speaker 1: be sure to check out stuff to Blow your Mind

1125
01:01:37,040 --> 01:01:39,960
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where we'll find all the episodes, as

1126
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 1: well as links out to our very social media accounts

1127
01:01:42,520 --> 01:01:47,080
Speaker 1: such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etcetera. Uh and I Hey,

1128
01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:49,040
Speaker 1: I want to remind everyone if you want to support

1129
01:01:49,080 --> 01:01:51,200
Speaker 1: the show, A great way to do that is to

1130
01:01:51,720 --> 01:01:54,600
Speaker 1: go to wherever you get this show, whatever your your

1131
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1132
01:01:58,720 --> 01:02:01,800
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1133
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:04,840
Speaker 1: That helps us to continue doing what we're doing. Huge

1134
01:02:04,920 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams

1135
01:02:08,640 --> 01:02:10,640
Speaker 1: and Torry Harrison. If you would like to get in

1136
01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:12,439
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1137
01:02:12,440 --> 01:02:15,360
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1138
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:17,400
Speaker 1: us know what you like about the show, to suggest

1139
01:02:17,440 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, any of that, you can

1140
01:02:19,640 --> 01:02:23,040
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works

1141
01:02:23,320 --> 01:02:34,800
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1142
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:36,439
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