One day near the end of the 13th century while traveling through the kingdom of Basma, modern day Sumatra (an island in Indonesia), Marco Polo came upon a strange animal that he believed was a unicorn. Based on his journal entries from the trip, Polo not only believed in unicorns, but he believed in them so whole-heartedly that he didn’t even seem surprised when he “found” one.
Throughout history, unicorns have been described as majestic horses with pure white coats with a single magical horn protruding from their foreheads. Even though nowadays unicorns are only found in children’s books or depicted whimsically on clothing from Urban Outfitters, back in the middle ages unicorns were symbols of purity and stories of hunting them were commonly used in Christian allegories.
Although Marco Polo was a Catholic in an era rife with allegorical stories, he apparently never paid much attention to the widely accepted depiction of unicorns because he described them as having “hair like that of a buffalo, feet like those of an elephant, and a horn in the middle of the forehead, which is black and very thick.” Polo goes on to say, “The head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry it ever bent towards the ground. They delight much to abide in mire and mud.”
Based on his description, we know that Polo was actually describing a rhinoceros, an animal that looks nothing like the legendary unicorn except for it also having one horn, which also looks nothing like a unicorn’s.
The weird thing about Polo’s account is that he openly admits he has heard of unicorns and even claims to know what they looks like by saying, “‘Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon, and is not in the least like that which our stories tell of as being caught in the lap of a virgin; in fact, ’tis altogether different from what we fancied.” However, it never crosses his mind, after years of traversing the uncharted areas of the world, that this creature may not be a unicorn.
So, in the end, Marco Polo thought rhinos were unicorns because what else could they possibly be? It’s okay, Polo, Columbus once thought manatees were mermaids.
