GOOD OLD DOCTOR BEACHCOMBING, HE'S ALWAYS THERE WITH SOMETHING WITH WHICH TO AMAZE AND INSTRUCT

Beachcombing is returning with some relief to familiar territory after the Shakespeare wars of the last couple of days. The subject: unicorns and the earliest human accounts of these mysterious creatures.

In the Indus Valley about 3000 BC a series of seals were created that portray an animal with one horn: they predate the mention of unicorns in the Bible by perhaps two thousand years (or more if as seems likely the Biblical unicorn is based on a mistranslation). Read on