Ancient sex symbol discovered, or is this just a phallusy?

Ice Age Phallus. Photo by J. Liptak, Universität Tübingen

I saw the press release arrive and thought to myself that with all the possibilities of double entendres it could grow into something big. The BBC’s news story Ancient phallus unearthed in cave was the most discussed topic on the web according to Technorati. It’s not the first sexual art to be discovered from the Ice Age, so why should it be so thrilling? A look through the blogs reveals a very similar conclusion. Usually Ice Age artefacts can be bowdlerised as ritual figurines. The shape and markings of this artefact are quite emphatic in their sexual nature.

But why has their been a reluctance for archaeologists to engage in sexuality before? The sexual act can, rather like drugs, transport the participant to an altered and euphoric state of mind. Yet when we see re-enactments of ancient rituals we may see the actors drinking a potent brew, but we don’t see mass participation intercourse. Why is that? Well one reason is obvious and should indicate why it doesn’t even occur as a possibility the creators of scripts for such re-enactments. We work within out our times and culture mores, and currently we frown upon open sexual acts. They are supposed to be private and with only as many people taking part as is necessary. I’m not blessed with supernatural insight, so I don’t know if such an attitude reflects in-built natural preferences, or if it’s the result of living in a Judeo-Christian culture.

Similarly while the shape is emphatic, there is little we could know about the recipient. Opinion among the blogs appears to be uniform as to its use. I haven’t seen anyone arguing that the recipient could be an unwilling receiver, nor can we even be certain as to the sex of the user. There are many examples of homosexual activity in prehistoric art. Could the device be an example of sympathetic magic, a Palaeolithic viagra to be taken internally? Could it even be the tool of a shaman to ensure the fertility of animals? Many prehistoric scenes are examples of human/animal relations. What do we know about ancient sex?

Despite the wails of those who would lament the increasing visibility of sexuality in the modern era, we probably live in a much less sexed era than antiquity. One frequent tale found throughout the pre-modern world is the creation of the universe through biological reproduction. Hesiod’s Theogony is an orgiastic tale of sexual excess which ultimately results in Mother Earth producing everything. Egyptian creation myth prefers the universe to be the seed of masturbation. The belief in sex as a creative act probably existed because the power of biological cycles was demonstrated on an annual basis. Further, the universe must have been the product of sexual act because there was nothing like a ‘Big Bang’ theory to explain where it came from. In this world-view you have an existence where the mechanics aren’t made from atoms or electromagnetic fields, but sexual actions. This might seem a non-scientific view of the world, but this does not necessarily mean that the ancient attitude to sex was primitive.

Procreation was something that could be controlled. The invention of farming was the result of careful control of reproduction of both plants and animals. How much information was known about human reproduction in prehistoric times is uncertain. Anthropological evidence suggests this kind of knowledge is highly gendered. A male anthropologist trying to discover secret female information is likely to find that some doors remain shut. Even knowledge from ancient Rome and Greece is patchy, as the authors were male, though there is some evidence of ancient contraception. In Rome half lemon rinds were used as barrier contraception. The citric acid was also a spermicide, which added to its success. A more well known form of contraception is known from ancient Egypt a plug made from crocodile dung and sour milk. This is suggested to be both a barrier and a spermicide. The smell may have also acted as an incentive for the man to go outside for a brisk walk instead.

There were also oral contraceptives. Soranus, a 2nd century AD physician recommended Silphium, a relative of the carrot, as both a contraceptive and medicine for an early abortion. Indeed there are references to abortion in the Hippocratic Corpus, an early medicinal work, which recommends jumping up and down violently. It would appear that, despite living in a world where divinity was considered a reasonable explanation for most things, the ancients were pro-choice.

It may even be a woman’s right to choose that physically shaped our species. Darwin’s theory of Evolution through Natural Selection is well known. Less attention is paid to another problem he examined, sexual selection. When he looked at some animals, they seemed to make little sense. Why would a peacock carry around such a massive encumbrance as his tail? Where was the evolutionary advantage? He concluded that the reason they has such a tail was that peahens found them sexy. Similarly it is thought that many human features may have evolved not because as a solution to a specific environmental problem, but because human females found them sexy. One example is the brain.

Men might struggle with the concept of the brain being a sexual organ, but a larger brain may have had reproductive advantages. The current favoured explanation for the increase in brain size between Homo Habilis and Homo Sapiens is the need to be able to manage a greater number of social relationships. In his recent book The Singing Neanderthals Steven Mithen argues that increased brain size and capacity for language created the ability to socially groom acquaintances. As you physically groomed one potential mate, so you could also chat-up another. This might sound like a more plausible male brain.

In his book the Prehistory of Sex, Timothy Taylor also notes that males may have female preferences to thank for the size of their penis. In comparison to other primates, human males are massively well-endowed, their organs visible even when flaccid. Taylor argues that while not every female may want a larger member, some will, while there are no females who’d prefer penises to be smaller. So the evolutionary pressure is on an increase in size. Ironically the most male organ might be a female creation.

Timothy Taylor also noted the problem in putting modern ideas about sex onto the past. Most sexual art from the Ice Age is female like the Venus of Willendorf. This has been used to argue for a powerful mother goddess, or even a matriarchal society. Yet as Taylor points out, despite all the Virgin Mary statues in the world, the Pope is still a man.

Venus of Willendorf. Photo by McManly

So at the moment there’s not a lot that can be said about this latest discovery. Certainly it helps balance out the current inequality in representations of male and female sexuality in the Ice Age, but what it tells us about sex in the Ice Age is harder to say. Most confusingly it is unlikely to have had just one use. As the press release below states, it also appears to have been used for flint-knapping, which would suggest that it had at least two uses.

Prof. Nicholas Conard and members of his research team based at the Institute of Pre- and Proto-history and Medieval Archaeology of the University of Tübingen will present a newly discovered Paleolithic stone phallus from Hohle Fels Cave near the village of Schelklingen in Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany. The stone phallus is made from fine-grained siltstone and has been heavily ground, polished and incised. The artifact provides new insights into the symbolism and sexuality of the Gravettian period. This period is well-known for its female representations, such as the Venus of Willendorf in Austria, but only rarely have masculine representations of this age been discovered.

The phallus has been dated via multiple radiocarbon measurements to 28,000 years ago. The find is 19.2 cm long, 3.6 cm wide and 2.8 cm thick and has been reconstructed from 14 fragments discovered from an archaeological horizon rich in stone tools and containing abundant burnt materials. The finds stem from excavations in 2004 and from earlier seasons. The artifact has an elongated form that does not occur naturally. The clear evidence for grinding and polishing support the interpretation that the shape is man-made. One end of the siltstone phallus has several deeply incised rings, that were cut using a sharp stone tool.

In the Paleolithic, also known as the Old Stone Age, figurative representations often are combined with functional tools. In this case the phallus from Hohle Fels was used as a hammerstone, as is indicated by several areas showing usewear from stone knapping. This find was both a functional tool and a masculine symbol. Finds of this kind are entirely unknown in Swabia and are extremely rare in other Ice Age contexts, including the Gravettian, which is best known for its abundant female imagery. The new findings from Hohle Fels are published in the current issue of the journal Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg.
The Phallus from Hohle Fels will be featured in a special exhibit in the Prehistory Museum in Blaubeuren, entitled: Ice Age Art: Definitely Masculine. The special exhibit will run until January 6, 2006.

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