In
The Natural History of Unicorns, Chris Lavers has set for himself
the daunting task of tracing the mythological origins of the unicorn
from its first mention in the writings of the Greek philosopher Ctesias
in the fifth century BCE. Lavers tries to track down Ctesias' sources as
well as how the depiction of the animal changes as it passed through
various Greek, Roman, and Christian hands. Furthermore, he
assumes that every addition has some factual basis, no matter how
altered that is.
In
the course of his examination of unicorns, Lavers looks at a variety of
different types of unicorns throughout mythology, from the now familiar
equine unicorn to caprine and bovine unicorns and even less familiar
versions of the beast, including some that have horns that are only firm
when the beasts are attacking. Lavers does an excellent job depicting
the different views of the unicorn throughout the ages and pointing out
which aspects of the unicorn remained and which only adhered to the
creature, or perhaps creatures, which we now think of when we have
the idea of a unicorn, although interestingly, the Chinese ki-rin, which
is generally depicted as one-horned, does not make an appearance in the
book.
Lavers's
style is informal, almost chatty in its nature. At the same time, he tends to skip from thought to thought
without providing an indication of how he got from one piece of
information to another or, at times, a conclusion.
Because his chapters are thematic in nature, this means that the
progression of belief in unicorns, which includes more than simply the
idea of a horse or a goat with a horn, is not always entirely clear,
and, of course, multiple ideas about the creatures could exist at any
given period in history.
The
text is quite thorough in tracking down a variety of reasons for a
belief that unicorns, whatever they might be perceived as, actually
existed, from the stories told by Ctesias and supported by authorities
such as Aristotle and Pliny, to the existence of the narwhal, which was
believed to indicate a parallel land-based creature, to the idea of the re’em,
a reference to which occurs in the Bible, but which is not tied to any
specific animal. Lavers has also tracked down a wide variety of lesser
known animals which actually exist and which may have provided some
features which were acquired over the years by the mythical creature.
The Natural History of
Unicorns offers a thorough look at the mythology of unicorns throughout the ages,
including why people believed such creatures existed. Lavers does not discuss the use of the unicorn in modern
literature, fantasy, or film, instead focusing on the less populist
versions of the creature and more on its more classical aspects. The book is liberally illustrated with photographs of the
creatures which may have contributed to the legends of the animal and
over all provides a fantastic exploration into cryptozoolology.
