In caves across the world there are multiple depictions of primitive men copulating with various animals.

Seeing these cave paintings, one might think that our ancestors were, colloquially put, horny as f*ck.

It seems that people who lived thousands of years ago were f*cking pigs, donkeys and even large animals like buffalos, elephants, rhinoceroses or giraffes.

One of the most notable examples is a cave painting at a „Coren del Valento“ site in Italian Alps showing a man happily waving while f..ing a donkey.

Trying to explain the scene, Jacobus X., an author of the book “Abuses Aberrations and Crimes of the Genital Sense“ from 1901 stated that it depicts a man complete with full erection standing behind a donkey.

„The viewer is left in no doubt that he intends to have sex with the donkey. Other people think that one cannot say if our prehistoric artist depicts himself, or something which he has observed someone else doing. What we can deduce however is that he has an intimate knowledge of the external sexual organs of this animal, and that it was made before any known taboos against sex with animals existed“, wrote Jacobus X.

While Jacobus X. believed that our ancestors clearly had intercourse with animals, some modern researchers disagree.

Susan Searight, who explored Moroccan rock art, where, among other things we can find a cave painting depicting a man having sexual intercourse with an elephant, argues that the extremely large size of the contact animal makes physical reality unlikely.

She, and many others, read these scenes metaphorically. Their theory is that cave paintings were made by shamans who were just drawing their hallucinations on the cave walls.

How cave art was created?

They believe that Palaeolithic shamanic rites may well have included frenetic, ecstatic dancing to the rhythm of clapping and chanting of mythic words (mantras), that is, all the known elements which eventually bring about an altered state of consciousness. On his return from this blissful though terrible experience, the shaman is able to report on this psychological experience in the symbolic language of the visions. Assuming that the cave paintings were depictions made by shamans following such ecstatic experiences, cave art may be seen to reflect the visionaries’ mystical experience.

However, there is an argument to be made that primitive men painted what they saw in real life.

What we now call cave art isn’t really restricted to caves.

Again, caves preserve the art better, but Stone Age paintings have been found on rocks and cliffs throughout Africa, meaning that it could have been that primitive men were drawing a lot more than we think – and perhaps they were just drawing scenes from their everyday life.

It is not hard to imagine a hunter gatherer playing in mud drawing what he saw that day, perhaps just to pass the time away.

The best evidence to support the theory that cave paintings are representation of everyday life can be found in Africa.

what did cave paintings show?

With the coming of white farmers to their land in the nineteenth century, indigenous people who lived their traditional lifestyle as hunter-gatherers had to fled to hill areas for safety. Caves in the hills became refuge houses. Cave art of that time is dominated by depictions of steam trains, soldiers, settlers and guns.

Although this suggests that primitive men were painting pictures of what they saw in everyday life, the truth is not that simple.

In 1971, a school teacher named Geoffrey Bardon was working with Aboriginal children in Papunya, near Alice Springs. He noticed whilst the Aboriginal men were telling stories they would draw symbols and shapes in the sand. Sometimes they were telling their myths and beliefs.

This left us thinking: did our ancestors copulated with animals or the cave paintings showing interspecies sex should be viewed as religious symbolism showing some kind of union between humans and their animal gods and spirits – after all in Aboriginal creation myth „The Dreaming“ one of the most common world creators is „The rainbow Serpent“ that threw the land out, making mountains and hills…

Perhaps scenes of sex with animals are just metaphors.

However, according to first European settlers in Australia, Aboriginal man actually had sex with animals.

In public and semi-public spaces, in regional newspapers, in administrative meetings and hearings, in beer halls and across campfires, white Australians talked about the sex acts performed in Aboriginal men’s rituals.

By 1936, sexological, anthropological, popular and religious writings reported that bestiality was integral components of some of the men’s sacred rites, together with genitaloperations, masturbation, group sex…

how did indigenous people lived?

Another insight into sexuality of people not belonging to the so called civilized world could be a study on the gaucho population living on the border of Brazil and Uruguay, conducted by dr. Ondina Fachel Leal and published in 1989.

This study found the gauchos to understand bestiality as a legitimate practice within a group where the dominant cultural belief consists of mastering the wild. A sexual relationship with certain animals is not only a sanctioned practice within this group, but is seen throughout south Brazil as a herdsmen’s or rural tradition. “Barranquear” is the regional term used to refer to male sexual relationship with animals, usually mares. There is a sort of hierarchy of animals to be followed in the “barranqueamento.” The sequence starts with the chicken and culminates with the mare. Chickens are for small and young boys, and the act is subject to ridicule. For the gauchos, bestiality shows courage, and the wilder the animal in the animal hierarchy, the more prestigious is the act.

In this study, researcher detaily described gaucho having an intercourse with a sheep.

„Contrary to my preconceived idea of the submissiveness of the sheep, it is said that the only way the animal will be quiet enough to allow genital penetration is if it faces the river, because sheep are intimidated by the water. It seems that here also the riverbank has another function than a place for the man to stand: it is the sheep who step on it, and the man’s position in intercourse with a ewe is on his knees. A popular saying goes, “if the rape is unavoidable, relax and enjoy it” that is used also to refer to a situation described as “facing the worst, one allows himself to be screwed” I doubt that this saying is connected only to man/sheep intercourse; but among the gauchos in some conversational situations it is said, to tease someone: “facing the water, the lamb…” or just “facing the water…” The sentence is incomplete, conforming to the closed male code typical of speech. It is almost impossible for the outsider, who must understand an entire chain of associations, to figure out its meaning in the absence of a specific referents and signifiers, although the group immediately decodes it. The interruption of the sentence, far from arising from any sort of moral constraint, is a speech strategy to maintain this male code only intelligible to those initiated into it. It is a symbolic production that is meant to be consumed only by its own producers, reinforcing the ties among them through libidinous aggression and by the deliberately hidden meanings. On sexual intercourse with sows, there is a general belief that the sow “falls in love” with the man and becomes an embarrassment. Indeed, there are pigs who follow a man everywhere. If the man is in a group, she will come and sit at the feet of the man who had (or has) sexual relations with her. The sow’s attachment to the man is take as indication that an “affair” is going on. It is said also that the sow is jealous, intruding and aggressive with the man’s wife, if he has one.“

It is said for Gauchos, that these were nomadic horsemen on the grasslands, practice a way of life that bear a great deal of resemblance to what it was hundreds of years ago.

Practice of human-animal sex is also recorded among many Native Americans.

As Rosenberger claims, bestiality varied from tribe to tribe. Married men, among the Navaho Indians (in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah), were known to occasionally engage in bestiality while out herding alone, and unmarried women engaged in bestiality, as well (Deutsch 1948 cited in Donofrio 1996). Bestiality was common among the Crow (native Americans who live in the upper basins of the Yellowstone and Bighorn rivers, in eastern Montana) who had no scruples about having sexual relations with mares and wild animals that had just been killed in the hunt. Although all forms of animal sexual contacts are said to be taboo among the Ojibwa (native Americans and Canadians who live in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario), Ojibwa women were known to have sex with dogs, while Ojibwa men had sexual relations with dogs, bears, moose, beavers, caribou, and porcupines (Gregersen 1983). Cases of bestiality among the Mohave (native Americans who live along the Colorado river in Arizona and California) are known to have involved mares, female asses, heifers, sows, and hens (Menninger 1951). Bestiality was fairly common among the Hopi Indians in north Arizona (Ford and Beach 1951; Dekkers 1994), who consider sex with animals socially acceptable (L’Etalon Doux 1996). Hopi men are reported to have intercourse with burros, dogs, horses, sheep, and chickens (Ford and Beach 1951), and Hopi boys are sometimes directed to animal contacts so they will leave girls alone (Rosenberger 1968; Gregersen 1983). The Sioux (native Americans of the Great Plains) and the Apache (native Americans in south-west US and in north Mexico) had similar views. The Plains Indians (a number of native north American tribes that inhabited the Great Plains, and followed the buffalo) were known to experiment with colts and to use freshly slain animals for sexual purposes (Rosenberger 1968). The list goes on.

Is is also reported that hunters of the of the Salteaux Canadian Indian tribe had sex with moose and with female bears they have shot, before the animals get cold (Menninger 1951).

This suggests that cave paintings made thousands of years ago showing men copulating with large animals like buffalos, elephants, rhinoceroses or giraffes should not be viewed strictly metaphorically.

Perhaps, primitive men simply f*cked animals they killed.

And live animals also.

Let’s face it, any kind of animals.