EVER wondered why missionary is the most popular sex position – or if people back in the day did it as much as we do?
According to sex historian Kate Lister, any suggestion that our ancestors were "prudish" in the bedroom couldn't be further from the truth.
In fact, she reckons the regular romping in Bridgerton wouldn’t have come as any kind of surprise for those living in 1813.
From the origins of sex toys to ancient aphrodisiacs, here Kate offers a potted guide of bonking through the ages – and the origins of some of our modern day kinks.
SEX TOYS
Humans have been creating toys to enhance their sex lives as long as long as there have been sex lives.
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We have found tortoise shell sex toys from China in the Qing Dynasty and ivory dildos that were hidden in an 18th century French convent.
One of the oldest dildos ever discovered is the ‘Hohle Fels phallus’.
It was discovered in the Hohle Fels Cave in Germany in 2005 and was carbon dated to somewhere between 26,000 and 30,000 years old.
The jury is still out on whether this was a sex toy or some kind of devotional object, but either way, it is a very old penis.
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BEANS AN ‘APHRODISIAC’
Despite the popular image of damsels in distress and chastity belts, sex in the Middle Ages was surprisingly progressive.
They didn’t always get their facts right though.
For one thing, there was a belief that erections were caused when the penis filled with air.
As a result, beans were thought to be an aphrodisiac.
BDSM
Some of the oldest evidence of BDSM can be found in ‘The Tomb of the Whipping’, an Etruscan tomb in Lazio, Italy.
It dates to around 490 BCE and gets its name from the fresco on the wall that shows two men who are flogging a woman as they have sex with her.
In the 1800s there were establishments known to cater to kink, such as Theresa Berkley’s brothel in Hallam Street, London.
According to Henry Spencer Ashbee, Theresa’s "instruments of torture were more numerous than those of any other governess”.
Her brothel was the place to go where anyone “with plenty of money, could be birched, whipped, fustigated, scourged, needle-pricked, half-hung, holly-brushed, furze-brushed, butcher-brushed, stinging-nettled, curry-combed, phlebotomized, and tortured till he had a belly full".
BIRTH CONTROL
Sex in the past was a fun, naughty, and enjoyable experience.
Pig gut condoms were being used in the 1500s, and there is evidence of contraception being used all the way back to ancient Egypt.
One method used back then was a vaginal pessary made from crocodile dung and honey (which may well have been effective in stopping people have sex).
The first recorded vasectomy was actually performed on a dog by a man called Sir Ashley Cooper in 1823.
By 1899 it was being used on human males as a ‘cure’ for excessive masturbation.
It would take another 50 years or so for vasectomies to be offered as a method of birth control.
TOP POSITION
The missionary position has always been incredibly popular, but it took on new and religious significance when the early Catholic Church started to teach that this was the only acceptable position and that anything else was sinful.
Thomas Aquinas, a 13th century Italian theologian, for example, believed that intercourse in "unnatural" ways was a crime against nature.
HIGH AND MIGHTY
Marilyn Monroe once said, “I don’t know who invented high heels, but women owe him a lot.”
So it may come as a surprise to learn that the first high heel shoes were worn by blokes.
Heels were sported by the Persian cavalry in the 10th century to keep their shoes in their stirrup.
By the 17th century, the heeled shoe had become the must-have fashion item for any dashing man about town.
Women didn’t start wearing them until the 18th century.
LGBTQ
Same sex desire and gender fluidity is found all throughout history, but some of the most important documents in queer history are the diaries of Anne Lister.
She spent most the early 19th century seducing the women of Halifax and recording her conquests in a secret code in her many diaries.
Her neighbours were well aware of her exploits and nicknamed her Gentleman Jack and Captain Tom – Tom being a slang word for a lesbian at the time.
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While Anne was misbehaving up north, London was famously filled with gay brothels, known as ‘Molly Houses’, that were subjected to repeated raids by various vice squads.
Kate's podcast Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society is available to listen to now.
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