New Exhibition Pays Tribute to 100,000 Years of Sex
Friday, February 2, 2007
Ancient phalluses, the world's oldest condom, a naked anatomically correct Neanderthal: visitors to the new exhibition "100,000 Years of Sex" will find plenty to stimulate their brains -- not to mention other organs.
Most people have enough trouble imagining their parents having sex. But your ancestors from 100,000 years ago? Yes, they had sex too, strange as it may sound. In fact, humans have been having sex since ... well, since humanity existed.
Now a new exhibition in Germany pays tribute to 100 glorious millennia of making out and doin' it. The show "100,000 Years of Sex" at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettman near Düsseldorf addresses -- in a strictly scientific manner, of course -- such burning questions as: When did we start feeling lust and thinking about sex? Did meat get exchanged for sex in the Stone Age? And just how did the ancient Greeks and Romans do it?
The exhibition which opens Feb. 3 and runs through May 20, features voluptuous clay figures, well-endowed statues and ancient containers featuring rather raunchy engravings. The visitor can expect a "journey through time as interesting as it is pleasurable," the museum said in a press release. Highlights include a 28,000-year-old phallus and the oldest condom in the world.
The show also addresses how sexual attitudes -- often seen as set in stone today -- have evolved over the millennia. Attitudes to marriage, homosexuality and pedophilia were very different in the past, and what went in ancient Rome was frowned upon in the God-fearing Middle Ages, not to mention our own puritanical age. Sexual mores from all periods are explained in the no-holds-barred exhibition.
Visitors to the museum will be greeted by a reconstruction of a Neanderthal individual who has been specially stripped of his usual leather garments for the occasion -- and who is anatomically correct.
The Neanderthal mannequin is the symbol of the museum, which is located in the German valley where Neanderthal remains were found and which gave the humanoid species its name. (The scientific jury is still out on the question of whether Neanderthals and humans actually had sex, however.)
Just to make sure humanity continues to propagate itself for the next 100,000 years, the museum offers "singles tours" around the exhibition as part of its program -- complete with complementary glass of red wine to help lower those inhibitions and let the erotica on offer take its course.
posted by LeBlues @ 9:24 AM,
