Image: A jade erotic art piece made during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). China.
Sexuality has been a part of the human experience since our inception as a species.
Since the beginning of civilization, humans have incorporated sexuality into erotic art, worship, and daily life. There have been cultures and times were explicit references to sexuality were more accepted by societal norms, and times when there have not.
However, the repressive view of sexuality espoused by the Church in the Middle Ages, and then the repressed sexuality of the Victorian era have left many in the Western world believing that few if any in the past were willing and able to accept and even revel in their sexuality.
Most of us look to the past and think of an era where sexuality was a taboo subject, until the groundbreaking social changes of the 60s and 70s.
This view was supported by many of the authorities of the 20th century, who often edited explicitly sexual objects and events out of history books and museums.
When the lost city of Pompeii was first rediscovered in the 19th century, King Francis of Sicily had all the many sex artifacts found placed in a “secret cabinet” to be locked away.
