The fable of the unicorn was one of the more famous passages in what are known as bestiaries, gorgeous compendiums of creatures both real and imagined that sold like mad---second only to the Bible itself. While they were passed off as solid knowledge, bestiaries were almost always wildly wrong about the natural world. Nonetheless, these charming tomes were indispensable to the beginnings of modern science, helping lay the groundwork for the field of zoology as we know it.
The post Fantastically Wrong: Unicorns Dig Virgin Women, and Other Lessons From Medieval Bestiaries appeared first on WIRED.
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