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Did Marco Polo See Unicorns?

By Melissa Markham on October 1, 2007 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The kids and I have been reading a biography of Marco Polo by Olive Price. This is an older book that I picked up at a book sale. It was published in 1953. The kids have enjoyed playing Marco Polo in the pool, so I thought it would be fun to read the book. He led a fascinating life, but what really threw me was when we were reading last night and came across this statement:

"It was on Sumatra that he first saw an animal called the unicorn. It looked like a white horse. but it had one straight horn growing out from its forehead."

I was taken aback. This is a nonfiction book. I didn't believe anyone had ever actually seen a unicorn...so I of course had to google it:

I found the website In the Footsteps of Marco Polo and here are the descriptions from his travels.

Did Marco Polo really see a unicorn? In the Middle Ages, most Europeans believed in the existence of such creatures. Read the following descriptions from Marco's Travels and try sketching the animals just as described.

In Kara-jang:
"In this province live huge snakes and serpents of such a size that no one could help but be amazed even to hear of them. They have two squat legs in front near the head, which have no feet but simply three claws, two small and one bigger. They have enormous heads and eyes so bulging that they are bigger than loaves. Their mouth is big enough to swallow a man at one gulp."

In Sumatra:
"They have wild elephants and plenty of unicorns, which are scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant’s. They have a single large, black horn in the middle of the forehead. They do not attack with their horn, but only with their tongue and their knees; for their tongues are furnished with long, sharp spines, so that when they want to do any harm to anyone they first crush him by kneeling upon him and then lacerate him with their tongues."

The first describes a crocodile. The second is a rhinoceros.

The book also mentions a flour tree he discovered in Sumatra. This is what is known as the Sago Tree.