Folks boned in ancient times and folks will continue to do so until the end of times. In general, and as history shows, humans like to bone, and a lot. Today, we’re total prudes compared to our ancestors.
Porn, today gets a lot of bad rap, but the truth is that widespread sexual visualisation is not a recent thing. There were erotic books, drawings and sculptures that have depicted human sexual behaviour throughout history.
There’s a myth that people have become more promiscuous or sexually amoral as time has gone by. But we’re total prudes comparing to our ancestors.
A lot of modern pornography is made not just to help people get off, but to help them get off in a more fulfilling way. Pornography can help couples improve their sex lives and can help to improve marriages.
Of course, as in all things Internet, there is also a lot of bad porn out there, including images depicting violent acts between non-consenting parties, but that’s not the type of porn majority of folks like to indulge in.
Our human sexual habits aren’t much different now from what they were in Victorian England, medieval Japan, imperial Rome or ancient Africa. We’re people, and we like to bone. A lot. And here’s the evidence.
Ancient India
As far back as 3,500 BC, Indians have documented sex acts in their religious texts. Hinduism was the first to introduce sexuality in a scientific way, effectively acting as the first sex ed. Religion literally used to help people have better, hotter sex.
In the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of the Hindu religion, we see sex show up a lot. It didn’t just mention “traditional” types of sex, it featured acts of homosexuality among the gods and the presence of transgender deities. Ardhanarisvara, for example, is the expression of transgender properties in the form of a deity.
The Kama Sutra
The Kama Sutra offers advice on improvement of one’s sex life, including numerous position guides. This book ties up how the pursuit of sexual pleasure ties into the pursuit of love and happiness.
The Kama Sutra acknowledges that sex is an inevitable and vital part of human existence, and does not attach any shame to the act of lovemaking. This seems to me, as well as to a significant population of the world, to be both the correct and healthy attitude toward sex.
Like the Kama Sutra, a lot of modern pornography is made not just to help people get off, but to help them get off in a more fulfilling way.
To help people embrace and improve their sexuality and, by consequence, their love lives.
According to the Scientific American, pornography helps couples improve their sex lives and can help to improve marriages
The Romans
The Romans who lived their lives by the principles of Stoicism, sex was a wonderful thing “if enjoyed between people who maintained the principles of respect and friendship; in the ideal society, sex should be enjoyed freely, without bonds of marriage that treated the partner as property.” Sounds a whole lot like modern ideas of sexual equality and feminism, huh?
It’s not that Stoics and other Romans were encouraging people to become evil, adulterous fiends? The idea this concept expresses is a lot closer to the sexual equality associated today with polyamory and even swinging.
They also publicly displayed statues and frescos of threesomes, homosexuality and lots of oral sex.
Sex toys
Another way we know that people’s sexual behaviours haven’t changed that much over time is that we’ve found plenty of archaeological evidence of ancient sex toys. And we’re talking really ancient? Archaeologists once found a 28,000-year-old dildo in Germany.
Victorian England
Thanks to the fine people on Tumblr and Instagram we bring you a scandalous peep show from Victorian ear to prove to you that porn and visualisation of sex was a thing. The photo below proves that booty- eating has been in vogue since …..forever.
So yeah, our prehistoric ancestors were sitting on dildos, jerking off while looking sexual pictures and having sex just as much as we do today.
So we can say with some certainty that people’s sexual behaviours haven’t changed much.
People love to blame the modern proliferation of pornography on some phantom “increase in promiscuity,” but history tells us that sex has been something we’re all curious about and enjoy having lots of.