The possibility follows that a miracle happened, a series of miracles or mutations or a series of mutations. The problem with the latter idea is that mutations very rarely and statistically significantly lead to improvement. Mutations are common and they lead to death routinely. So yes, it’s possible, that man developed from primates but it’s more likely that the planet was seeded by aliens. Alternatively aliens may have landed here and built the Atlantis of yore and then devolved to the Stone Age and then resurrected. All are not nearly as fanciful as the widely accepted notion that we ‘evolved’ from apes. That does not mean that while we are distinct from apes we are not of the same ‘family’
The great joke of evolutionary biology goes like this. A child goes to her father and asks him where she comes from and he says, ‘we descended from apes’. The child then goes to her mother and says where did we come from and the mother replies, ‘from sugar and spice and all things nice.” She then replies ‘but dad said we came from apes. To which the mother replies, “that was his side of the family, dear’.
Putting aside the controversial idea of evolutions of complex entities with as yet unexplainable leaps of faith between species and yet clear evidence of evolutionary factors within species and less complex organism, it is still possible to learn some interesting things from observing our cousins, the chimpanzee and bonobo.
First they don’t seem to know how children were created. There doesn’t seem to be any knowledge that an event many months before was associated with the birth of an infant. The idea that sex was associated with child bearing is not intrinsic. It’s a learned matter that was not even likely in the early cave man Stone Age hunter gatherer society era. It was known once animal husbandry began. Indeed as the dog was the first domesticated animal, breeding of dogs might well have provided the first clue. But for an inordinate time humans like apes are likely to have had sex simply because it felt good and was an ‘urge’. The issue of ‘heat’ and ‘estrous’ distinguish human females too and that was indeed one of the factors that affected human community. But it was only later that sex and childbirth were linked in a cause and effect sort of way. It wasn’t till modern times that even scientist has a notion of the sperm and egg and much later DNA. Hundreds of thousands of years were needed before the double stranded helix was conceived and evidenced. Indeed the nature of Jesus , as God or Man God chimera or all god and all man in mystery was debated for hundreds of years culminating in a decree, a ‘consensus report and law, in the early years of the Roman Catholic Church. For a very long time the metaphor of sperm and egg was that the sperm contained the replica of the human and the egg was merely the ‘earth’ in which it grew. This was a patriarchal interpretation and there were matriarchal ideas but the interpretation of scientific observations followed the cultural hierarchy in early years when censorship was normal and knowledge was propaganda.
The principle purpose of Sex would appear to have been pleasure with a secondary issue of reproduction. Alternatively reproduction was a priority coupled with pleasure to ensure survival of the species.
That can well explain penile vaginal intercourse, ejaculation and ovulation and reproduction. However pregnant women continue to have sex and men have historically in the rape and force tendency of brute strength and receptivity made mistakes. The many jokes of ‘wrong hole’ speak to the problem of the proximity of anus and vagina and the errors that were and are inherrent.
A northern fly in doctor wrote of his experience being called to a native reserve in the Yukon because of a delayed delivery. He wrote that all the elder women of the village sat around the girl in labour and watched him as he examined her. He put his finger in the anus to assess the progress and dilation of infant head and vagina doing it this way so as to avoid contamination of the birth canal. At that moment the elder women collectively spat and walked out saying something in the local dialect. The doctor later asked the midwife what had happened and was told they said ‘wrong hole’ concluding a white male doctor knew nothing of childbirth.
Dominant males have not been known for their sensitivity and specificity. Premature ejaculation is evidence of an advantage in survival of the individual that limits the survival of the species. Given the vulnerability of the sex act and survival being quick for a male was satisfactory, efficient and safe. That there were those who had premature ejaculations was less a concern than those who had delayed ejaculation. As for the woman’s ‘pleasure’ this was sufficient with frotterism. Indeed because of pelvic anatomy a significant percentage of females can’t have orgasm with intercourse. We can see that masturbation with primates male and female and with children is rather normative. So the whole mating thing occurred in ‘association’ with sexual pleasure and reproduction but not necessarily linked solidly together. Lots of sex and wasted sperm and eggs and a matter of timing at the very least and a whole range of other factors necessary for the reproductive lottery to take place.
Later, much later, ‘breeding’ became important and the authorities and church became involved in the bedroom. For hundreds of years the bedroom was the domain of religion and then became the domain of the state until recent times when PM Trudeau , senior, catching up with the times claimed ‘the state had no place in the bedrooms of the nation’. With that parliament was excluded and the courts moved in. Laws upon laws upon laws now government sexual conduct and the expansion of contractual sex snowballed. The state had indeed been involved in the off spring of sex and had been involved in ensuring that sex occurred within classes given the social hierarchy and breeding notions which followed from studies of animal husbandry. Survival of the fittest and the stud and brood mare ideas followed from the god chosen rulers. The state had an interest in the offspring and wanted the parents to be accountable for the children but sex itself wasn’t an exact science in the day. It was pleasure and the idea was to avoid pregnancy for the woman and for the man to enjoy himself.
Since the advent of the effective condoms in the 19th century and the birth control pill in 1952 , the capacity for family planning increased exponentially.
Anal sex though painful initially was found to be highly pleasurable and definitely an alternative to vaginal sex when it became known that it was vaginal sex that gave rise to pregnancy. It would have been a long time before someone having vaginal and anal sex to guess which act resulted in intercourse. I’ve seen patients today who simply did not know how they got pregnant. In traumatic cases it’s a blur and details are forgotten. In other cases it’s just not known and I know because I didn’t believe it in some cases so did in depth questioning only to be reassured that they didn’t know. Intelligence, culture and being told by mothers, aunts and sisters are necessary prerequisites to the knowledge of pregnancy. Now having that clear it’s uncertain as to which time or with whom the pregnancy occurred. DNA testing of parents and child is only a very recent advance and the 19th century courts today still refuse to have men know if the child is theres despite evidence that says nearly 50% of children of divorce are not the fathers.
Masturbating men, men masturbating, anal sex and oral sex have all been birth control methods since modern times. No one knows with certainty what people did sexually in general until the 19th century. The book Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex by Alice Dreger is a delightful read in which the first cases of Transexualism were noted by clinicians. When it’s as recognised one woman was a man the solution for the Russian father was to send her to the rural community to be married as no one would know in the ‘sticks’.
Anal sex has been a part of the homosexual community for an indefinite time with terms like sodomy being very old in language. It was associated with anger and rape and dominance, rape being an act of aggression used by insecure men against women and other men. Yet it was also a preference for many effeminate men so called ‘sissies’ and as well the macho male pairs where one prefers the ‘bottom’ or for those Maccho males who fight together and culminate the ‘win’ of sex with sodomy. Certain cultures indeed have a fight that culminates in the man penetrating the woman. Today the vestiges of this are still seen in the romance novel celebration by women of the ‘make up sex’ and a preference for the ‘bad boys’ by certain women. There are even women who write rapists in jails and those who choose men for their violence. The argument being that these women felt violent men would protect them and also that they took pleasure in ‘training’ violent men and having them as their personal weapons much as some like to have big cats as pets and particularly violent pit bulls as family dogs.
HIV brought anal Sex into the day to day discussion because spread of disease , the STD’s were commonly associated with anal tears. The brilliant Abraham Verghees describes in his classic novel ‘Cutting the Stone’ the problem of vaginal tears in child brides of Africa. It might well not be the actual anal sex as the HIV viral blood contact which comes with tears of any kind given that so many African women were as prone to HIV as gay men. Tears in rape and tears in child birth resulted in recurrent tears in intercourse.
Today the life expectancy with treatment of HIV is similar to diabetics with treatment however the stigma of homosexuality and anal sex still affect the HIV patient who in the west might well have got the disease as easily through a ‘dirty’ needle or a prostitute yet the stigma is real. Diabetes as with all disease was thought a supernatural disease of ‘affliction’ all illness thought evidence of being out of favour with the gods in pagan religion or having ‘bad karma ‘ in eastern religions. The sins of the father (and mother) were expressed in the children as disease. Hence the witch doctor and exercise.
The idea of anal sex was also that this was the source of ‘demons’. A whole topic of interest. The supernatural consideration of homosexuality and the supernatural and indeed the satanic. So much of the ‘dark arts’ are merely ‘reactive’ to the church so the cross is put upside down. The church is pro children and vaginal sex and the dark side is pro anal sex and no children. The whole matter remains in flux but it’s important to recognise that it’s more than nothing to most and has been for hundreds of years if not thousands.
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