* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Penn State-Themed Restaurant and Entertainment Spot Happy Valley Live Set to Open in State College – StateCollege.com

    Penn State-Themed Restaurant and Entertainment Spot Happy Valley Live Set to Open in State College – StateCollege.com

    The Police Made Chart History With This 1979 Hit Nearly 50 Years Ago – Yahoo

    How The Police Changed Music Forever with Their Iconic 1979 Hit Nearly 50 Years Ago

    Good Deed Entertainment Acquires Worldwide Rights To Liza Mandelup’s Documentary ‘Caterpillar’ – Deadline

    Good Deed Entertainment Lands Global Rights to Liza Mandelup’s Captivating Documentary ‘Caterpillar

    Danielle Fishel Explains Why Being on “DWTS” Makes Her Feel ‘Like It’s 1994 Again’ Filming “Boy Meets World” (Exclusive) – Yahoo

    Danielle Fishel Explains Why Being on “DWTS” Makes Her Feel ‘Like It’s 1994 Again’ Filming “Boy Meets World” (Exclusive) – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Claims He Was ‘Disrespected’ on the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Opens Up About Feeling ‘Disrespected’ During the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Steampunk Metal Oval Technology Sense Sunglasses Personality Handmade Chain Multicolor Sunglasses UV400 – The San Joaquin Valley Sun

    Steampunk Metal Oval Sunglasses with Handmade Multicolor Chain – Bold UV400 Protection and Unique Style

    STELLA Automotive AI Appoints Fred Seidelman as Chief Technology Officer – Yahoo Finance

    STELLA Automotive AI Appoints Fred Seidelman as New Chief Technology Officer

    Saving Energy and Money with Smart Technology – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy – Podcast on CNN Podcasts – CNN

    Saving Energy and Money with Smart Technology – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy – Podcast on CNN Podcasts – CNN

    Four Strategic Signals Technology Leaders Are Tuning In To – SPONSOR CONTENT FROM ARM – Harvard Business Review

    Four Essential Strategic Signals Every Technology Leader Should Watch

    Virginia Tech hosts annual New Music + Technology Festival this week – Cardinal News

    Virginia Tech Kicks Off Exciting Annual New Music and Technology Festival This Week

    Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Tim Berners-Lee – The Guardian

    Why I Decided to Make the World Wide Web Free for Everyone | Tim Berners-Lee

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Penn State-Themed Restaurant and Entertainment Spot Happy Valley Live Set to Open in State College – StateCollege.com

    Penn State-Themed Restaurant and Entertainment Spot Happy Valley Live Set to Open in State College – StateCollege.com

    The Police Made Chart History With This 1979 Hit Nearly 50 Years Ago – Yahoo

    How The Police Changed Music Forever with Their Iconic 1979 Hit Nearly 50 Years Ago

    Good Deed Entertainment Acquires Worldwide Rights To Liza Mandelup’s Documentary ‘Caterpillar’ – Deadline

    Good Deed Entertainment Lands Global Rights to Liza Mandelup’s Captivating Documentary ‘Caterpillar

    Danielle Fishel Explains Why Being on “DWTS” Makes Her Feel ‘Like It’s 1994 Again’ Filming “Boy Meets World” (Exclusive) – Yahoo

    Danielle Fishel Explains Why Being on “DWTS” Makes Her Feel ‘Like It’s 1994 Again’ Filming “Boy Meets World” (Exclusive) – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Claims He Was ‘Disrespected’ on the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere – Yahoo

    Jussie Smollett Opens Up About Feeling ‘Disrespected’ During the ‘Special Forces’ Season Premiere

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

    TicketSmarter Fall Entertainment Guide – Eastern Illinois University Athletics

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Steampunk Metal Oval Technology Sense Sunglasses Personality Handmade Chain Multicolor Sunglasses UV400 – The San Joaquin Valley Sun

    Steampunk Metal Oval Sunglasses with Handmade Multicolor Chain – Bold UV400 Protection and Unique Style

    STELLA Automotive AI Appoints Fred Seidelman as Chief Technology Officer – Yahoo Finance

    STELLA Automotive AI Appoints Fred Seidelman as New Chief Technology Officer

    Saving Energy and Money with Smart Technology – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy – Podcast on CNN Podcasts – CNN

    Saving Energy and Money with Smart Technology – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy – Podcast on CNN Podcasts – CNN

    Four Strategic Signals Technology Leaders Are Tuning In To – SPONSOR CONTENT FROM ARM – Harvard Business Review

    Four Essential Strategic Signals Every Technology Leader Should Watch

    Virginia Tech hosts annual New Music + Technology Festival this week – Cardinal News

    Virginia Tech Kicks Off Exciting Annual New Music and Technology Festival This Week

    Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Tim Berners-Lee – The Guardian

    Why I Decided to Make the World Wide Web Free for Everyone | Tim Berners-Lee

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Unicorns in southern Africa: The fascinating story behind one-horned creatures in rock art

June 25, 2023
in Science
Unicorns in southern Africa: The fascinating story behind one-horned creatures in rock art
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Unicorns in southern Africa: the fascinating story behind one-horned creatures in rock art

One-horned rain-animal from a site near Indwe in the Eastern Cape province. Credit: David M. Witelson

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

For example, the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder wrote about unicorns in the first century AD. The unicorn features in both medieval Christian and Celtic beliefs, and is Scotland’s national animal. The unicorn’s prominence in European culture spread across the globe with colonization.

In southern Africa, colonial European ideas encountered older indigenous beliefs about one-horned creatures. I’ve highlighted this in a recent research article about some of the region’s rock art.

Unicorns in Africa?

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

A famous search for such evidence was carried out by the English traveler, writer and politician Sir John Barrow (1764-1848). He’d heard rumors about “unicorns” from the colonists and local people he encountered on his southern African travels.

One of those rumors was that unicorns were depicted in the rock paintings made by the indigenous San (Bushman) inhabitants of the region. Barrow searched unsuccessfully for them. Then, in mountains in what’s now the Eastern Cape province, he found and copied an image of a unicorn (Figure 1).

Unicorns in southern Africa: the fascinating story behind one-horned creatures in rock art

Figure 1. Barrow’s unicorn.

But many were skeptical of his claims. His published copy resembles a European engraving rather than a San rock painting. More generally, critics have argued that rock paintings of unicorns were probably inspired by side-on views of gemsbok or South African oryxes—antelope with long, straight horns—or by rhinos (which might have one horn in India, but have two in southern Africa).

My research concludes that these criticisms don’t take into account several factors that have since come to light. My paper provides further support for the claims that some San rock paintings do indeed depict one-horned creatures.

Multiple rock art depictions

Early documented rock paintings of one-horned creatures are known from 19th and 20th century copies by British geologist George Stow and South African teacher M. Helen Tongue.

I draw attention to additional examples of rock paintings of one-horned creatures (Figures 2 and 3).

Unicorns in southern Africa: the fascinating story behind one-horned creatures in rock art

Figure 2. A pair of spotted one-horned animals surrounded by fish. Credit: David M. Witelson

Collectively, these show that rock paintings of one-horned creatures can’t be dismissed as naturalistic profile views of two-horned creatures, one horn covering the other.

Rain-animals

The second way in which my research engages with early criticisms is to draw attention to previously overlooked indigenous beliefs concerning one-horned beings.

The evidence suggests that the “unicorns” in indigenous mythical beliefs and rock art are actually animal-like forms of rain, known as rain-animals.

Tongue’s colleague and co-worker, Dorothea Bleek, compared Stow’s and Tongue’s copies and suggested in 1909 that rock paintings of one-horned antelope were probably kinds of rain-animals, which she knew from |Xam San (Bushman) myths.

Rain-animals feature prominently in San ritual, myth and art. They take many forms, ranging from four-legged creatures to serpents. They were ritually captured and slaughtered by San rainmakers to cause rain to fall in specific places. Many |Xam myths tell of the dangerous male rain, sometimes personified as the “Rain”, who turned pubescent girls and their families into frogs when the girls did not correctly observe their initiation taboos.

Unicorns in southern Africa: the fascinating story behind one-horned creatures in rock art

Figure 3. Digital drawing of original rock painting near the town of Dordrecht. Credit: David M. Witelson

Among other details, my paper highlights a fascinating and previously missed reference to a one-horned water creature. In one of the variants of a story told by |Han≠kass’o or Klein Jantje—a |Xam man who was an expert storyteller—a “water child” or juvenile rain-animal is said to have a single horn. The story was written down in phonetic script (to record the sounds of the San langauge) by Lucy Lloyd (Bleek’s aunt) and translated into English.

The girl in |Han≠kass’o’s story breaks the rules of her ritual puberty seclusion by going to a pond and catching (like fish) the children of the rain, which she cooks and eats. After a few times she struggles to catch another one: unlike the others, this last creature is “a grown-up water”.

We know what made it recognizably grown-up: unlike the others, it had a single horn that poked out of the water. We have, therefore, the actual |Xam San words (which translate as “horned rain-child”) used to describe this kind of rain-animal, which we find in the rock paintings in and around the Eastern Cape.

An intersection of beliefs

In the colonial period, indigenous people were exposed to European images of unicorns on crests, badges and buttons and through tales. In one of the recorded instances, indigenous people at the Cape saw the British royal coat of arms and commented on the unicorn in it. They recognized it as their “god”, but this description, translated into English from an unknown indigenous idiom, probably refers to the creature’s mythical nature rather than a genuine god-like status.

Foreign unicorn images may have gradually influenced local ones. Some rock paintings of one-horned creatures—dated by associated human figures in European dress to the colonial period—show horns pointing upward or forward (Figure 4) like the European unicorn, rather than backwards like antelopes, such as the eland (Figure 5), on which many rock paintings of one-horned rain-animals are modeled.

One-horned animals depicted in rock art are not mere rhinos nor antelope, nor are they the creatures of European myth.

Indigenous beliefs help us to explain that the uncanny resemblance between European unicorns and South African “unicorns” was pure chance. The mixing of foreign beliefs with local ones in colonial South Africa has hidden the independent, indigenous creature.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.The Conversation

Citation:
Unicorns in southern Africa: The fascinating story behind one-horned creatures in rock art (2023, June 24)
retrieved 24 June 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-06-unicorns-southern-africa-fascinating-story.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Phys.org – https://phys.org/news/2023-06-unicorns-southern-africa-fascinating-story.html

Tags: scienceSouthernUnicorns
Previous Post

Hurricanes push heat deeper into the ocean than scientists realized, boosting long-term ocean warming

Next Post

Why I Hopped from Manjaro Linux to EndeavourOS

The billion-year reign of fungi that predated plants and made Earth livable – ScienceDaily

October 1, 2025
We Asked an Entomologist to Fact-Check the Science of ‘Alien: Earth’ – Esquire

We Asked an Entomologist to Fact-Check the Science of ‘Alien: Earth’ – Esquire

October 1, 2025
Building Better Leaders Through the Science of Happiness – Pace University

Unlocking Leadership Potential: How the Science of Happiness Transforms Leaders

October 1, 2025
Viral ‘Goth house’ for sale just in time for Halloween – The Weekly Journal

Step Inside the Spooky ‘Goth House’ Perfect for Halloween!

October 1, 2025
Steampunk Metal Oval Technology Sense Sunglasses Personality Handmade Chain Multicolor Sunglasses UV400 – The San Joaquin Valley Sun

Steampunk Metal Oval Sunglasses with Handmade Multicolor Chain – Bold UV400 Protection and Unique Style

October 1, 2025
Atlanta Braves Manager Brian Snitker Moving to ‘Advisory Role’ – FOX Sports

Atlanta Braves Manager Brian Snitker Moving to ‘Advisory Role’ – FOX Sports

October 1, 2025
The sleepy SF neighborhood that just became one of the world’s coolest – SFGATE

The sleepy SF neighborhood that just became one of the world’s coolest – SFGATE

October 1, 2025
The “stuck economy,” tariffs and Wall Street – marketplace.org

How Tariffs and Wall Street Are Strangling the Economy’s Growth

October 1, 2025
LSU Theatre’s season opener: A handkerchief discovered by a lovesick suitor adds up to hilarity – The Advocate

Love, Laughter, and a Lost Handkerchief: LSU Theatre’s Season Opener Promises Hilarious Fun

October 1, 2025
Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program – Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services | CMS (.gov)

Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program – Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services | CMS (.gov)

October 1, 2025

Categories

Archives

October 2025
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Sep    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (846)
  • Economy (866)
  • Entertainment (21,740)
  • General (17,353)
  • Health (9,910)
  • Lifestyle (880)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (869)
  • Politics (877)
  • Science (16,077)
  • Sports (21,367)
  • Technology (15,850)
  • World (849)

Recent News

The billion-year reign of fungi that predated plants and made Earth livable – ScienceDaily

October 1, 2025
We Asked an Entomologist to Fact-Check the Science of ‘Alien: Earth’ – Esquire

We Asked an Entomologist to Fact-Check the Science of ‘Alien: Earth’ – Esquire

October 1, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version