In a new teledocumentary series, SEX: A Bonkers History, on Sky HISTORY, actress Amanda Holden hosts “a historical review of the sexual history of all of time.” Sounds like a big undertaking, right? The show is spread between five different episodes, with a guest host historian to accompany Holden.
Unfortunately, the show isn’t available in the US without a UK VPN, but Sky History provides a summary of the facts, which STOREROTICA is sharing below. After perusing some reviews of the show, it seems all we’re missing are the bad puns and the period piece wardrobe changes of Holden’s. Darn! What follows is just the history: “how sexual behaviour through the ages has shaped civilisation in ways we are only now beginning to discover.”
The history of sex
As long a people were being created, someone was creating them — that much is clear. But how long has sex been a recreation, an activity with a purpose for more than just procreation?
Sky History’s full review covers from the pagan societies which ritually sacrificed female orgasms, to the double-ended dildo for two female lovers found in the ruins of Pompeii, to show that sex and sexual aids for pleasure have been used throughout human history.
How it began
In 1992, archaeologists unearthed a 2000-year-old ‘object’ in the Roman Fort of Vindolanda, Northumberland and classified the device as a darning tool. It was only in February of this year that a team from University College Dublin and Newcastle University published a study in the journal Antiquity, suggesting that the phallic-shaped wooden carving may have actually been used for sexual pleasure.
StorErotica covered this discovery here.
And yet, this is far from the earliest recorded discovery of a sex object. Sky HISTORY shares that toys from prior eras, which have been found to be dated at around 500 BC, were also carved from wood, as well as stone and leather, with some discoveries suggesting sexual devices made from camel dung and resin. A chalk phallus worth an honorable mention was discovered at the Membury Rings Neolithic site (10000 BC-2200 BC) in Dorset and is believed to be one of the most ancient sexual aids in existence. But the oldest device ever found was in the German Hohle Fels cave in 2005. At approximately 28,000 years old, the 7.8-inch siltstone phallus predates agriculture by around 13,000 years.
The origin of “dildo”
According to Sky HISTORY, the term “dildo” has been on the Western market since 1850, when the rubber variety were readily available. The etmology of the word ‘dildo’ predates this use: derived from the Latin ‘dilatre’ for ‘open wide’, and the Italian ‘diletto’ or ‘delight’, the term emerged initially around 1400 AD.
In Ancient Greece however, dildos were sold as ‘olisbos’, a sexual aid for women to use while their husbands were away, which could be made of the ordinary materials, or, for the upper class, of gold, ivory and silver, according to The Archaeologist. An ‘olisbokollix’, made from bread, was jokingly suggested as a softer alternative.
Sexual wellness
The Babylonians weren’t quite as funny with their use of bread for sex. Sky HISTORY reports that “Long before American Pie debuted making apple pie the gentleman’s choice, warm bread would be expertly applied to men suffering from an external urethral obstruction to clear the blockage by inducing ejaculation.”
In the United States, a man by the name of Frank E. Young offered an 1892 cure for piles, which was popular for a 40-year-run, until the 1938 Federal Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act intervened on his sale of the 4.5-inch ‘Rectal Dilator’ as “false advertising.”
And of course, Victorian London has the rap of some of the most sexist medicinal history to date. As Sky HISTORY (a British source) shares: “In Victorian London, women suffering from anything from insomnia to abdominal heaviness could be diagnosed with ‘female hysteria’. Hysteria was originally the Greek word for uterus leading doctors to deduce that ‘pelvic massage’ was the best cure. The idea of female arousal was prescribed in Victorian England and so the condition was classed as non-sexual. This meant these pelvic massages led to a perfectly respectable hysterical paroxysm instead of any of those filthy orgasms.”
Following doctor’s orders, around 75% of women in Victorian London had received treatment for hysteria by the mid-19th century.
Vibrators make their name
In 18th century France, a device called the ‘Tremoussir’ was the first-ever reported vibrator. A portable wind-up toy with little power, this early adult pleasure device was likely to disappoint in the task at hand. By the 1860s, according to Sky HISTORY, a few water-powered alternatives came about “which could be hooked up to a sink and bragged a mere four minutes to paroxysm.”
In America, the steam-powered ‘Manipulator’ by George Taylor was released in 1869. And in 1880, London’s Dr Joseph Granville created the first electromechanical vibrator, which took precedence over the first electric irons and vacuum cleaners, predating them by a decade.
By 1909, vibrators had made a respectable market for themselves with ‘tried and tested’ advertisements in publications such as Good Housekeeping.
“As sex was only classified as penetration at that time, their use was still not considered sexual,” Sky HISTORY details. “Women proudly displayed their vibrators right up until the late 1920s, when their appearance in early porn films spoiled the ruse and they promptly disappeared from polite society.”
StorErotica tells a complicated history of the vibrator here.
In addition to vaginal and clitoral stimulators, archaeological evidence shows toys for penises, too. With the nobility of 3rd century China have been found the remains of cock rings made from goat eyelids — among some of the more difficult to imagine fashions.
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