History is a lot of things. Fascinating, confronting, sometimes shameful, often brutal, and also incredibly kinky.
Esme Louise James is a sex historian – her work explores the history of human sexuality – including hidden queer histories, plus kinks and fetishes throughout the ages.
Listen now:
In this chat with Antoinette Lattouf, Esme reveals her favourite historical kink and her TMI moments whilst working with her Mum.
Esme began sharing all the fun facts she was learning during her research via TikTok during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
If you were ever wondering when the first dildo was discovered, her first video tells you just when – but she also gave us the details on the podcast.
“It was about the oldest dildo recorded in history, which dates back 28,000 years, and it was found in this German cave in fourteen fragments,” Esme explained.
“And when they put it together, they essentially found a phallic object that had a ring around the top and was quote, ‘highly polished at the top from overuse’.”
“They had no other choice but to classify it now as the world’s oldest dildo and we do have dildos from like 5,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, 11,000 years ago, but to this day, 28,000 years is still the oldest known dildo.
“It is a fascinating fact because again, we think of sex toys as this really these new things, but we’ve been using sexual aids and sexual toys for longer than we’ve had writing.”
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