Drawings, paintings and old objects reveal that there is nothing modern about wanting to have maximum pleasure.

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They had already found 13 pieces. One was missing.

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And then, in 2005, the rock fragment completed the puzzle of that sui generis object: a 20 cm long and 3 cm thick phallus, highly polished and with carved rings at the base of the glans. It is the first consolation of humanity found so far, which may have been used as an instrument of pleasure 28,000 years ago.

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The site where the accessory was, the cave of Hohle Fels, in Germany, is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. It was also there that the team led by the American Nicholas John Conard, from the University of Tübingen, found in September 2008 the six fragments of a female sculpture at least 35 thousand years old. 6 cm high and made with ivory from a mammoth's tusk, the Hohle Fels Venus, as it was dubbed, has huge breasts, a deep slit that runs from the top of the butt to the vulva and legs slightly ajar, from where you can see generous large lips.

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Another Venus, that of Willendorf, a village in Austria where it was dug up, measures 10 centimeters, is 24,000 years old and also exhibits a big breast, big ass and exuberant genitals. The difference with Hohle Fels is that she has a head. The other is not. Instead, what exists above the trunk is a ring, indicating that it may have been used suspended from a string. An amulet, an ornament.

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Prehistory sexual references are not uncommon. There are about 200 Venus, named after archeologists in honor of the goddess of beauty and love in Roman mythology. There are also drawings and sculptures with an erotic connotation. In France, they found a rock with vulvas hewn approximately 35,000 years ago and a 25-centimeter penis shaped 36,000 years ago in a bison horn. In the cave of La Marche, also in French lands, there are walls full of drawings of sexual positions made 14,000 years ago.

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Brazil is another country rich in prehistoric records. In the Serra da Capivara National Park, in Piauí, rock paintings take over 700 archaeological sites. Among the four themes that appear most in the graphics are sex practices, alongside representations of dance, hunting and rituals around trees. And it has it all: in pairs, in threes, in groups, with animals, in stunning positions.

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According to São Paulo archaeologist Niède Guidon, some findings from Serra da Capivara date back to 50 thousand years ago, a thesis that contradicts the most accepted theory about the arrival of man in America through the Behring Strait, between Siberia and Alaska, 13,000 years ago .

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As we cannot say for sure when and how our ancestors exchanged caresses and fluids, sculptures, drawings, paintings and utensils are just clues that archaeologists follow to understand the beginnings of human sexuality. And then the conclusions can change according to the customer's interpretation.

 

A part of the researchers argues that the sex scenes are only artistic, the representations of the genitals are objects in honor of gods of fertility and the various female figurines are the result of an era in which women were venerated as Mother Earth. This would explain the fact that they appear so voluptuous, because they would be pregnant, about to give birth to a new life.

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On the other hand, there are those who alert to this type of interpretation, considered moralistic by some archaeologists, such as the American Timothy Taylor. For him, prominent vulvas, carefully polished penises and erotic drawings speak for themselves, indicating that the prehistory of sex was free from monotony. Antiquity too.

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Sex in the City

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Receiving money in exchange for sex was a regulated activity in ancient Rome and Greece. Prices were controlled and services were taxed to pay taxes. There are documents showing that not only women prostituted themselves, but men too, usually for the same target audience: the male clientele. In Greece, there were two main classes of prostitution. The pornais, who served in brothels or on the streets and were slaves, poor or teenagers rejected by their parents, and the hetaeras, well-educated courtesans who served as companions of upper-class men.

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In Rome, sex workers were also given different names according to the place in which they performed and their social class. Fornicatrices (from the Latin fornix, meaning arc), for example, were on the streets under arches or vaulted spaces. But there was a term to define them all: loupes (wolves), possibly an allusion to the wolf who, in the legend of the creation of Rome, nursed the twins Rômulo and Remo - Rômulo was the founder of the city. Roman brothels were called lupanares (house of wolves). The most famous of them, with ten rooms and two floors, is that of Pompeii, one of the most preserved archaeological sites in the world.

Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in 79 AD, which petrified and kept intact various objects, works of art and even bodies of victims in the position in which they died. The excavations revealed sculptures, paintings and drawings considered a slap in the face of society. Like the images of Priapus, the Greco-Roman god of fertility, represented with a gigantic phallus and always erect. The term priapism, a disorder in which the erection is prolonged and causes pain, originated from him. Egyptian mythology also has a fertility god, Min, portrayed with an equally huge, raised penis.

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But the most eye-popping object was the marble sculpture of a half-human figure, half a goat penetrating a goat. It is Pan, the Greek god of nature associated with Faun by the Romans. Pan is responsible for multiplying herds.

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The cult of gods was common among the Romans. In Pompeii alone there were four temples dedicated to them and decorated with images that translated their sagas in heaven and on Earth.

Less divine interpretations deserved the paintings that adorned the walls of lupanares, bathrooms and, archaeologists say, common residences. These clearly show two, three or four people having sex in different positions. Mugs and lamps adorned with erotic images, wind chimes with hanging phalluses and penis amulets also aroused interjections of astonishment. Not to mention the bronze coins that, on the one hand, display a number - from I to XVI - and, on the other, an explicit sex scene.

 

These files populate the imaginary of modern man who inhabits laboratories. Some say they were used in brothels according to the service the customer wanted and the room number he would receive. Or perhaps the number recorded there meant the price paid for the order. Others believe that, just like mugs with breasts, butts and phalluses are just mugs - of dubious taste, by the way - the coins would be decorative souvenirs.

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Several finds from Pompeii and the neighboring city of Herculaneum surfaced in the 18th century. They were considered so pornographic that they only came out of the cellar for public viewing in 2000, at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, where they display, with discretion, even today. The 250-piece collection is in the reserved “Secret Cabinet”. Anyone who wants to visit it needs to mention this when buying the ticket at the entrance of the museum. The maximum period of stay in the room is 45 minutes and under 14 years old only enter with the parents or teachers.

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But Rome did not live only in lupanaria. Romantic love was celebrated in the words of the most famous poet of the time, Ovid, who lived between the 1st century BC and AD 1. Ovid was well respected when he decided to write a trilogy called The Art of Loving, a seduction manual for men and women: “Love is like war. Cowardice is useless in the services of Love. The night, the winter, the long marches, the cruel suffering, the hard work, all these things have to be borne by those who fight in the campaigns of Love. You need to put pride aside. If access to your loved one is denied, if her door closes against you, go up through the roof and through the chimney, or through the skylight. How delighted she will be to learn of the risks you took for her! ”

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Despite the odes to love, the work was not well received. Emperor Augustus, who ruled between 27 BC and 14 AD, sent the poet into exile in the year 8 and, according to Ovidio's own reports, one of the reasons for this sad outcome may have been one of his works. Augustus wanted to reestablish Roman morality and created laws that encouraged marriage, the generation of children and monogamy. The Art of Loving would be an incentive for adultery.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Mediterranean ...

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The Egyptians believed that the heart was the center of the body and the soul. And that from him all the veins went towards the extremities. The main one ended in the ring finger of the left hand, which would explain, in their view, the fact that the organ was moved to that side. Couples should use a metal ring on that finger to hold the other's heart - and we embrace that tradition too. The material of the ring varied according to the family's economic conditions. The point of this story is that the circle, which has no beginning or end, symbolizes eternity. Therefore, the covenant is a union forever and ever.

There is little evidence of polygamy among those people, except in the harem of the pharaohs. Adultery was morally reprehensible for both sexes. Only not all loves lasted forever. There are records of division of assets and divorces requested by men and women, who had the same rights under the law, although socially the wives were subjected to the wishes of the husband, and the unmarried, the parents and siblings.

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About the Egyptian findings, there are not many artifacts that opened up intimacy to two, neither to three, nor to four. The ornaments and paintings are more symbolic and refer to fertility and the gods. For example, in those days, there was a belief that sex led to rebirth after death. As they would need the body in eternal life, there are mummies with penises or metal nipples attached, so that they could use them in the hereafter.

 

It does not mean that the people there only had sex for procreation. Indicative of this are the contraceptive formulas found in Papyrus Ebers, one of the oldest medical treaties preserved to this day. The document dates from 1552 BC and gathers 700 records of knowledge that may be even older. Scholars believe the treaty has compilations of practices made since 3000 BC

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Another papyrus, the Kahun, was made in 1825 BC and is a gynecological compendium of 34 paragraphs, two of them dedicated to formulas to prevent pregnancy. Among the ingredients of the jelly for intimate application was honey, possibly efficient because it would reduce the mobility of sperm. , and sour milk, for releasing lactic acid, an ingredient that changes the pH of the vagina and makes the environment harmful to male sex cells. About the effectiveness of the techniques, there is nothing proven.

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The first pregnancy tests in history may also have been Egyptian inventions. On papyrus, practices such as urinating for two days on two tissue bags, one containing wheat seeds and the other, barley, are documented. If the wheat germinated, the woman was pregnant with a baby girl. If the barley germinated, he was a boy. If neither avenged, she was not pregnant, and if the two went forward, there would be doubt about the sex.

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Wheat and barley contain phytoestrogens, which act on vegetables similarly to human sex hormones. In pregnancy, estrogen levels soar. There may be a relationship between the action of the substance found in abundance in the urine of pregnant women and the germination of grains. Regarding the sex of the baby, according to a survey by the Tel Aviv University in Israel, the levels of the hormone HCG, produced only during pregnancy and responsible for the elevation of estrogen and progesterone in the body, are on average 25% higher in the presence of the female fetus than in the male. This suggests that it is possible that there are differences between the biochemical composition of the urine of pregnant girls and boys. Now, if it makes wheat sprout instead of barley, science has yet to investigate.

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But back to being slutty… Between four walls, the business was heating up. It is what is seen in the most erotic papyrus found in the region so far, painted between 1292 and 1075 BC and exhibited in Turin, Italy. The document has been known since 1822, but it was not until 1970 that the main content was disclosed: 12 scenes in which men with huge members have sex with women in acrobatic positions. The papyrus earned the nickname of the Egyptian Kama Sutra. But it's a little thing close to the famous Indian book.

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This content was originally published in the Book Proibido do Sexo: o amor, oejo e sacanagem , by journalist Marcia Kedouk.