European ideas about unicorns spread across the world in the colonial era. In South Africa, hunts for that creature, and indigenous rock paintings of it, were commonplace. The aim was proof from ‘terra incognita’, often with the possibility of claiming a reward. There has, however, been little consideration of the independent, local creature onto which the unicorn was transposed. During cross-cultural engagements, foreign beliefs in the mythical unicorn and a desire for evidence of its natural history intermixed to an extraordinary degree with local beliefs in a one-horned animal. For over two centuries, colonists and researchers alike failed to realize that the local creature, by chance, resembled the European unicorn. A new synthesis of southern African ethnography, history and the writings of early travellers, missionaries and colonial politicians provides unambiguous evidence that one-horned creatures obtained in local beliefs before the arrival of colonists. Moreover, it shows that these creatures are depicted in South African rock art, and that they are a manifestation of San (Bushman) rain-animals. By ignoring relevant beliefs and images, previous scholars have failed to acknowledge that the South African unicorn was, apart from its four legs and single horn, a creature wholly different from the European one.

欧洲关于独角兽的想法在殖民时代传播到世界各地。在南非，寻找这种生物以及它的本土岩画是司空见惯的。目的是来自“未知领域”的证据，通常有可能获得奖励。然而，很少有人考虑到独角兽被移植到的独立的当地生物。在跨文化交往中，外国对神秘独角兽的信仰以及对其自然历史证据的渴望与当地对独角动物的信仰在很大程度上混合在一起。两个多世纪以来，殖民者和研究人员都没有意识到当地的生物偶然与欧洲独角兽相似。对南部非洲民族志、历史以及早期旅行者、传教士和殖民政治家的著作进行的新综合提供了明确的证据，表明在殖民者到来之前，独角生物就已经在当地的信仰中获得了。此外，它表明这些生物在南非岩画中有所描绘，并且它们是桑（布须曼）雨动物的表现。由于忽视了相关信仰和图像，先前的学者未能承认南非独角兽除了四足和独角之外，是一种与欧洲独角兽完全不同的生物。