6 Fascinating Works Of Art Made By Our (Horny) Ancestors

Another stone is inscribed with the Marathi equivalent of "May your mother be defiled by a donkey." The phrase is still popularly used as an insult today, proving that a good "Donkey Inside Your Mama" joke will stand the test of time. Oh and we're very excited to tell you that an academic paper describes this threat as an ass-curse. An ass-curse. That's a direct translation from the word gadhegal, as they are called.

Some scholars argue that the threat isn't a physical one, but more metaphorical. This is good news for anyone worried there is trace amounts of ass DNA in their bloodline. Still ... they sure made a lot of donkey-on-intruder art for a bunch of people who only kind of meant it.

According to art historians, the woman in these may represent Mother Nature, and there was a local superstition that if donkeys were used to plow a field, its crops would never grow. Which makes this a donkey "plowing" Mother Nature herself, which is a pretty aggressive threat for a highly agricultural society. So even if there was never meant to be any actual donkey penetration, they were at least saying they hoped you starved to death. And with an infinite number of ways to convey that message, they chose carvings of donkey cocks.

A brave historian wrote an ENTIRE THESIS on how these lewd badges were used to ward off evil spirits, and she even had the balls to dedicate it to her grandparents. The paper includes the analysis of such masterpieces as "Ambulant Vulva On Stilts," "Pudendum Turning Penis On Roasting Spit Over A Vulva Grease Trap," and the childhood classic "Pussy Goes A' Hunting."

But the author of a different paper has an alternate theory: We know that the Church ruled the area at the time, so the only way these badges could have been allowed was if they were so secular that they were actually religious.

One badge apparently ridicules female adulterers by portraying a woman pushing a wheelbarrow full of dicks and depicting the sinner as a pathetic dick-worshipper. Other badges may have been part of Shrove Tuesday festivities, which were basically Opposite Day only with ludicrous amounts of genital art. It inspired Topsy-Turvy Day from Disney's The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. During Shrove Tuesday, servants were treated as lords by their masters, and laziness was praised as a virtue. So the sexually profane was held up as sacred. This day actually reinforced the social norms because it showed how the idea of a peasant being anywhere near equal to a king was as ridiculous as a ... hmmm ... as ridiculous as a boat manned by penises?

We may never know exactly how all this beautiful art came to be. Because for every badge they find that makes sense, like a boat full of seaman dicks, someone made a monkey peeing into a mortar while standing on a fish.

Those lucky diggers had in fact discovered the oldest known worked gold in the world, dating back to 4600 BC. Not only that, but it was created by the earliest European settlers yet discovered. The first farmers had only left Africa a few hundred years before. Also, the fact that the gold was found in only a few of the hundreds of graves in the area gave proof of a hierarchical society. It was a gold mine of, you know, gold, but also of knowledge.

This is all very interesting, of course, but there was one particular item from the Varna Necropolis collection that got us excited.

Yes, that is where that dead guy's penis would be. And that is indeed a penis sheath. For those of you not familiar with such things, think of it like a hat for a dick. This particular one isn't very impressive length-wise, but gold is a very heavy metal, and any boner that can lift an entire sheath of it should be commended, not ridiculed.

The archaeologists did not write down all the dick jokes they almost certainly made when they found this gilded skeleton cock, but they did make a witty comment about the grave's owner: "He has everything -- armor, weapons, wealth. Even the penises of these people were gold."

The dead fellow, who we're obviously going to call Goldpenis, had the most precious metal in his grave, so he must have been someone of high status -- a king or maybe a priest. This leaves us with mental images of a monk wearing a ceremonial dick cap, or a monarch knighting a loyal baron with the Golden Knob.

Meet Artemis of Ephesus, the most well-endowed stone lady of all time. In addition to the hunt, moon, and chastity, she also represents -- you guessed it -- fertility. You see, she was both a virgin AND a mother goddess, kind of like the Virgin Mary. She's been worshipped since Paleolithic times, with the first image of her dating back to 6000 BC in Turkey. The goddess was appropriated by the Greeks around 1000 BC, when they occupied the part of Turkey once known as Ephesus. And while these are all important facts to know about her, we imagine her most notable feature is her 19 boobs. Though some scholars have pointed out that none of her many breasts have nipples, so they might actually be bull's testicles, which are also a symbol of fertility. Wait, that's way weirder, guys.

The Temple Of Artemis At Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world until some asshole burned it down. Visitors in ancient times could even buy souvenir models of the temple and the goddess's statue. The Bible tells us that St. Paul didn't like this very much, as he thought it was idolatry. This prompted silversmiths to stand in a theater and shout "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" for two hours. The moral of the story is: When you take out a whole bunch of tits, it's going to lead to some controversy.

They also found one of a woman getting cunnilingus from what seems to be a hobbit.

And a woman riding a dude:

Not all the naughty art they found was exactly sexy. Archaeologists also uncovered this display of knobby, horrible, chopped-off dicks:

And here are some giant-cocked demon oil lamps.

So all this porn is one thing, and penis lamps is another. But here's the real danger of your local volcano burying you instantly: everyone in the future is going to find out you decorated your home with a statue of Pan making sweet passionate love to a goat.

All of these beauties can be seen in the Gabinetto Segreto, or "Secret Cabinet," at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. They used to be part of the main exhibit on Pompeii, but when the future King Francis I visited it with his wife and young daughter in 1819, he was understandably scandalized (and come on -- probably into it). He ordered the more glistening-boner-brandishing pieces to be kept away from innocent eyes and seen only by "mature gentlemen of high moral standing." Luckily, the Gabinetto Segreto was opened to the public in 2000, so now anyone can go and giggle at it.

We should have led with this, but you can relax: this isn't Jesus flashing his junk. It's actually the Greek god Hermes. So why does it look like a crucifix? Mostly due to laziness. When ancient Greeks first began making statues of their gods, they would just carve the head so that it was recognizable, and then put it on a pillar that matched the god's height. Later, this practice evolved to include portraits of historical figures, and by the time it reached Rome, busts were used to depict people in general. And though they were only busts, some sculptors just HAD to include the penis, even when it was pointless or completely insane. For example:

Ancient Greeks never got around to fleshing out the arms of Hermes, but his erect dick had to be included because it represented "divinity." And while it's hard to judge history through the veil of our own perception, a man made entirely out of boner seems like a strange way to represent divinity.

Okay, so why the little arm-like stubs? Well, those are there to hang garlands. Because without the tiny nubs on the sides, what possible appendage could worshippers hang their garlands on? Oh. That's actually a good idea. But enough about Hermes' boner. The statues themselves, sometimes called "Herms," were used to mark crossroads, as Hermes was the god of journeys and helped bless travelers with safety. The placement of the statues may have evolved from the tradition of each traveler placing a stone on a heap at the crossroads for good luck.

The Herms became the center of controversy in Athens in 415 BC, when several of them were vandalized by "herm-choppers." And we know we said we were done talking about his boner, but guess which parts of Hermes got chopped off. Go on. Guess.

Laura H would like to thank Sam and Laura I for their gift of the British Museum Little Book of Erotica, without which she would never have heard of ass-curse stones. Follow her on Twitter.

For more sick from perversions from our forebears, check out 5 Famous Historical Figures You Didn't Know Were Perverts and 6 Famous Geniuses You Didn't Know Were Perverts.

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