June is pride month.
For the final post in my LGBTQ+ trilogy, this week I wanted to highlight some examples of same-sex attraction in humans from the ancient world. The history of human homosexuality.
We’ve already seen countless examples of LGBT animals, and now by looking at the behaviours of our own ancestors, we can solidify the fact that being lgbtq+ is a completely normal and natural thing to be.
Despite our recent attention to issues surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation, it’s no surprise that same-sex attraction is actually nothing new to human society. This can also support the idea that homosexuality may have evolved for a reason.
So, what are some of the examples?
Pre-civilisation
The earliest evidence for the existence of same-sex attraction dates back to pre-civilization. Where Mesolithic (from the stone age) rock art depicting same-sex male sexual activity has been described. Tskhay, and Rule (2016).
Archaeologists have also unearthed a 5,000-year-old grave of what they believe may have belonged to the world’s oldest known “gay caveman”. Telegraph.co.uk. (2011).
The male body is said to date back to between 2900-2500BC and was found in Prague in the Czech Republic. The reason he was believed to be homosexual was because of how he was buried.
He was buried in a position that was normally reserved only for women of his culture in the Copper Age. That is, with his head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic jugs. The article states: “From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake,” said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova. “Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual,”. Telegraph.co.uk. (2011)
Ancient Egypt
One example of written evidence of same-sex attraction comes from the New Kingdom period of ancient Egypt. Tskhay and Rule (2016) describe records of relations between pharaoh Neferkare and his general Sisene.
Moreover, in an Egyptian tomb at Saqqara, which is over 4,000 years old, two men were found buried together. The men where two high officials called Nyankh-Khnum and Khnum-hotep. They would have lived between 2494–2345 BC, and are probably the best-known case of possible homosexuality in ancient Egypt. Painted on the walls of the tomb were several depictions of the men embracing each other and touching their noses together. In Ancient Egypt, the nose-on-nose touching in paintings normally represented a kiss. Some researchers believe they are history’s first homosexual couple.
Ancient Greece
Perhaps the most examples can be found from ancient Greece.
In ancient Greece, homosexuality was an integral part of the culture. OVO Video Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Greek society had a custom known as pederasty, a homosexual relationship between adult men and boys between the ages of 12 and 18. This man- boy relationship was a rite of passage for all Greek males.
Greeks considered the search for beauty an absolute, regardless of whether the beauty was male or female. There was no difference between making love to a man or to a woman.
Both Greek mythology and Greek history are packed with examples of homosexual relationships. For instance, the legendary Achilles and his brother-in-arms Patroclus, or Alexander the Great and his friend Hephaestion.
Ancient Greek culture was very male-dominated and women were excluded from most sectors of society. However, history shows that a female equivalent of pederasty also existed.
The most famous example being poet Sappho, a music and dance teacher, who had sexual relations with her female pupils. The word lesbian actually derives from Lesbos, the name of the island where Sappho was born. OVO Video Encyclopedia. (n.d.)
The Middle Ages
During the medieval period, homosexuality was generally condemned in society. However, historian Allan A. Tulchin recently argued that a form of male same-sex marriage existed in Medieval France, and possibly other areas in Europe, as well. He states that there was a legal category called “enbrotherment” (affrèrement) that allowed two men to share living quarters, pool their resources, and effectively live as a married couple. By discovering “enbrotherment”, Tulchin may have actually discovered the earliest form of same-sex marriage, and an interesting argument against the idea that the medieval period was one of the most anti-gay in history.
Native America
Among Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European colonization, a number of Nations had respected ceremonial and social roles for homosexual, bisexual, and gender-nonconforming individuals in their communities; in many contemporary Native American and First Nations communities, these roles still exist.
Homosexual and gender-variant individuals were also common among other pre-conquest civilizations in Latin America, such as within the Aztecs, Mayans, Quechuas, Moches, Zapotecs, and the Tupinambá of Brazil.
East Asia
In East Asia, same-sex love has been referred to since the earliest recorded history.
Homosexuality in China, known as the pleasures of the bitten peach, the cut sleeve, or the southern custom, has been recorded since approximately 600 BCE. These euphemistic terms were used to describe behaviours, not identities [4].
Homosexuality in Japan, variously known as shudo or nanshoku, has been documented for over one thousand years and had some connections to the Buddhist monastic life and the samurai tradition. This same-sex love culture gave rise to strong traditions of painting and literature documenting and celebrating such relationships.
Similarly, in Thailand, kathoey, or “ladyboys,” have been a feature of Thai society for many centuries, and Thai kings had male as well as female lovers.
South Pacific
In many societies of Melanesia, especially in Papua New Guinea, same-sex relationships were an integral part of the culture until the middle of the last century. The Etoro people and Marind-anim people even viewed heterosexuality as sinful and celebrated homosexuality instead!
South Asia
The Laws of Manu, the foundational work of Hindu law, mentions a “third sex”, members of which may engage in nontraditional gender expression and homosexual activities.[4] Furthermore, such homosexual men were also known to marry, according to the Kama Sutra: “There are also third-sex citizens, sometimes greatly attached to one another and with complete faith in one another, who get married together.” (KS 2.9.36). The sculptures at the Khajuraho temple in ancient India, which was built in approximately 1000 CE, depict same-sex relationships between men, indicating that homosexuality in ancient India was not necessarily repressed, and may even have been broadly accepted by the society.
Conclusion
So it turns out that a plethora of sexual orientations and gender identities have pretty much been around for as long as humans have been around. And to be honest, I’m not surprised.
I hope this article, along with my other two pride month articles have helped to highlight just how normal and completely natural it is to be LGBTQ+. In fact, it’s something to be celebrated – it’s in our history, after all.
References:
1.Tskhay, K.O. and Rule, N.O., 2016. Ancient Homosexuality. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, pp.1-2.
2. Telegraph.co.uk. (2011). First homosexual caveman found. [online] Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8433527/First-homosexual-caveman-found.html [Accessed 26 Jun. 2019].
3. OVO Video Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Homosexuality in the Ancient World – OVO. [online] Available at: http://www.ovovideo.com/en/homosexuality-ancient-world/ [Accessed 26 Jun. 2019].
4. En.wikipedia.org. (2019). History of homosexuality. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_homosexuality [Accessed 26 Jun. 2019].
