STONE AGE — While Right Wing pundits wring their hands and screw up their faces in agonized, self-righteous concern about the allegedly degenerative and unnatural sexual behavior of 21st century humans, a British archeologist is reminding people that when it comes to sex, there really is nothing new under the sun.According to Timothy Taylor, an archeologist with the Bradford University, early humans were a lot more sexually adventurous than the public has been lead to believe. With language skills perhaps not as well developed as they are today, and no television, NASCAR races, or computer games to distract them from their daily grind, Stone Age men and women looked for universally understood ways to communication with one another and build social connections.
Some of the ways that our ancestors built social connections may sound extremely familiar. How about bondage, sex toys, crossdressing, and group sex? All that without MySpace, AdultFriendFinder, Bondage.com, Adam & Eve, or a local swingers’ club.
It gets better – for those who think sexual exploration without intent to reproduce is honorable and healthy. It gets worse – for those determined to depict sex as a necessary evil to be endured or a marital obligation to be modestly shouldered.
To top it all off, Taylor doesn’t think our countlessly great, great grandparents necessarily only did “it” with members of the opposite sex, either – and they certainly didn’t feel compelled to restrict themselves to only one partner during their short, brutal life.
In his Haworth Press book, Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality, the archeologist explains how the 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf statue, which depicts a nude woman with tiny arms, enormous breasts, and expansive belly and buttocks, as well as a contemporary stone phallus discovered in a German cave, are merely two pieces of evidence pointing to a decidedly non-abstinence-only, non-one-man/one-woman/baby-makes-three (after holy matrimony) way of life.
It was agriculture and settled home sites that inspired monogamy, according to Taylor. When daily living became more stable, and the world at large more manageable, humans began to develop gender based social roles. Our ability to look at one another while sharing intercourse also likely played a hand in how things reached the state they’re in today.
Unlike other animals, humans are difficult to visually sex from any distance. Men and women are roughly the same size, whereas male apes are generally much larger than their female counterparts. Other than size, apes have very few other visual cues as to their sex, since both are covered in hair, the females lack breasts, and the males are not exactly gifted genitally. Humans, on the other hand, have evolved prominent male genitals and female breasts which make it easy to tell them apart and determine s preference. Perhaps most importantly – and in perfect keeping with both ancient and modern uses of sexuality — the compatible body sizes of humans means that face-to-face sex is a possibility and that sexual behavior can be combined with communication, creativity – and social interaction.
“The widespread lay belief that sex in the past was predominantly heterosexual and reproductive can be challenged,” Taylor proclaims.
