The Siberian unicorn lived at the same time as modern humans (2018)
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Two recent examples: the last major landmasses to be settled by humans were Madagascar and New Zealand. These islands were home to very unique megafauna such as Haast's Eagle, the Elephant Bird, the Moa, Giant Tortoises, a species of Hippo, Crocodiles, Lemurs larger than a human, and others.
All went extinct within several hundred years of human arrival.
Humans are very crafty at using the whole animal so the processing of a carcass tends to leave traces all over a settlement wherever bits get used (bone tools and whatnot).
Hunting big and necessarily rare game has a worse risk/reward tradeoff and is less efficient than optimizing for shaking an antelope/deer/elk on the regular.
The environment was being turned upside down in all sorts of places at the end of the last ice age. Humans in many cases where the did hunt things only accelerated the inevitable by a few thousand years which sounds like a lot but is the blink of an eye in terms of evolution.
Basically unless humans left evidence indicating they habitually hunted these animals it's a pretty fair bet they did so only in an occasional opportunistic manner.
"But the cave art" you say?
Nobody posts the 100th medium sized whitetail doe they got that year on social. But if me and the boys get capitalize on a once or twice in a career opportunity to bag a rhino you can bet that mofo is going on the 'gram. Simply put, rare and exceptional events get proportionately more documentation effort put into them. If you "read the docs" that any civilization has left important people and exceptional events dominate when in reality the bulk of the labor was spent on food shelter and clothing.
>The last major landmasses to be settled by humans were Madagascar and New Zealand...
Comparing the ecological impact of the relatively population dense cultures that settled these islands to the ecological impact of nomadic neolithic people (who would have hunted steppe mammals) is like comparing a skid steer to a mining shovel. Furthermore, islands tend to exacerbate the impact because they're a relatively closed system compared to the mainland where if you can't find enough to hunt and gather you pack up and move.
These numbers are very shortly after when humans first show up in each place.
While climate change probably bears some of the blame, massive climate change is actually a regular feature of the last 2.5 million years. As the earth passes through glacial and interglacial phases, the temperature varies by as much as 10°C.
The biggest change in the past cycle is us, humans, who now constitute some 36% of mammal biomass.
I suggest that extrapolating backwards from the present state, as well as from recent first-colonization events, we should assume that ecological pressure from humans -including predation, displacement, and disruption of habitat and food webs- is the principle factor.
One could just as well speculate that what they recorded were things important to them.
If wheat or papyrus or irrigation or agriculture were important to them, they might record those things.
But also might record great threats to survival like pests or floods or drought.
You’re take would discount people in far northern latitudes hunting whales because there are easier prey.
Yeah, about that...
> Ice Age hunter-gatherers, foraging the bone-chilling, unforgiving steppes of what today is Russia, somehow completed a remarkable construction project: a 40-foot-wide, circular structure made from the skulls, skeletons and tusks of more than 60 woolly mammoths.
> Archaeologists have unearthed about 70 mammoth-bone structures across Eastern Europe. But this one is the oldest on the Russian plain thought to be made by modern humans. Most of the previously identified structures were small, leading researchers to conclude they were most likely used as winter dwellings on a nearly treeless landscape.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/science/mammoth-bones-cir...
Certainly there is evidence of hunting, but was it enough to lead to extinction by itself? Knowing that there was also a shift in the climate at the same time.
It was the same story with the Cretaceous extinction, where multiple factors were put forward (See: Fantasia for example). That is, until the KT boundary was discovered, showing a clear link to the extinction and a major asteroid/comet impact.
Hopefully as more evidence comes in we'll get a better picture.
After the third time you dump a rhino into the tribe's food processing pipeline and waste half of it before it can be eaten there will be a new directive or there will be a new chief.
This assumes that learning and practicing a skill is easier when food is abundant, and that skill can then be used in harder times.
Armies do the same when they spend all day long practicing without actually going to war. By your argument that would be a waste of resources, but history shows that well trained armies win wars.
Modern subsistence hunters still do this. Hunt a large animal or two at the start of winter and the meat can be frozen and then cooked all through the winter. A couple of Moose for example in modern times could provide 1000lbs of stored frozen meat for a family to get through the winter.
I am not necessarily saying that this would make it make sense for a tribe to bring down a dangerous 7000lb rhino and try to preserve it that way, but if the weather was cold during this period in Siberia it would have been possible.
In general, subsistence level tribes are just surviving, nor hunting excess animals.
That’s the definition of “subsistence-level”, yes.
We all know humans can run all day long, but the point is that it wasn't as easy then, and if it wasn't necessary then they probably wouldn't have taken the risk.
...now I'm not so sure.
Climate being responsible for both would explain why the extinction was global in scale and coinciding with the spread of humans.
This is not to say that your theory is wrong. Just that this is a potential alternate explanation.
Compared to sea animals where, I would say, a majority looks quite disgusting or they have some features that are not appealing to the human eye.
Humans have not only forced some animals to extinction but they have probably killed animals that they found less appealing.
My blind guess is fur. We mostly like fur and there is no fur in water.
[0] the original sense of Cicero’s “exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis” (“the exception proves the rule in cases not excepted”, e.g., a posting ”entry permitted in daylight hours” implies a rule that entry is prohibited outside of those hours.)
There is also a https://xkcd.com/552/ common cause of climate change at the time.
It's from Latin; basically, 'uni' means 'one', 'cornus' means 'horn'. 'One horn'. Is that clear enough?
The question is: what did the original users of the term mean by it?
So, the Siberian unicorn, being a member of the rhinoceros family, is probably as legitimately a “unicorn” as anything is.
Sideways depiction of an auroch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#/media/File:Aurochs_sk...
Indus Valley Civilization seal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn#/media/File:Indus_civi...
On that 'unicorn' seal, there seems to be something hanging from the belly of the animal. That looks very similar to the anatomy of male cattle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#/media/File:Arouquesa2....
African Rhinoceros!
I don't remember the details but I think it was something on the line of a description of "a large horse with a single large horn". Now if you imagine a large _gray_ horse with a single large horn it looks quite similar to a Rihno from afar.
Now where does the things about its horn being magical come from? Well Rihno horns are believed to have "magic" properties.
And what about it being white? It was added later, by people which never had seen it, I mean what is the most "stunning" looking real horse? A grate white one (for many people).
As a side note the unicorn from Siberia did exist alongside with humans, but is likely too old, to matter for the term unicorn. Through skeletons of it might have played a role, maybe.
An almost complete skeleton found, based on the picture. Seems strange the horn is missing.
“Its legs were longer than those of other rhinos and were adapted for galloping, giving it a horse-like gait.”
Close enough for me!
> In heraldry, a unicorn is often depicted as a horse with a goat's cloven hooves and beard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn#Heraldry
BTW, I highly recommend those tapestries in the Musee Moyenage - the Museum of The Middle Ages, if you're visiting Paris and are into medieval stuff.
https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/collection/oeuvre/la-dame-a-la...
Like an underwater unicorn
They've got a kick-ass facial horn
They're the Jedi of the sea
They stop Cthulhu eating yeTo answer the question correctly, we're gonna have to create some live ones and feed them virgins.