KEY POINTS:
Further proof that man descended from the early primates was on show at Stockholm Zoo last week when scientists as part of a 10-year study showcased gorillas and chimpanzees practising many of the sexual techniques and positions familiar to humans.
This graphic demonstration was designed to increase foot
traffic, and to highlight yet another ancient link between humans and primates, but scientists admit they are still at a loss as to when canines came into the equation.
"To see these isolated mountain gorillas practising sexual positions that we also enjoy is remarkable and, to be honest, in some cases a little arousing," said Dr Haime Kessel, of the Institute of Increased Carnal Knowledge.
"These creatures have never seen a human let alone a dog, so we are at a loss as to how they are able to pull off such positions with such confidence. Clearly there is an innate knowledge and a link with humans in the distant past."
Revitalised by these findings and limited funding from NZ On Air, a research team at Lincoln University hopes to be able to trace and document the history of the top eight sexual positions used by man by the end of this decade.
"This knowledge is on a par with cracking the code for the human genome," said Clive Bellows, a spokesman for the Lincoln scientific team. "I didn't work on that, but I think this will be of far more interest to the average man, and perhaps some women."
The so-called missionary position is said to have been developed about one million years ago, around the time of Lucy - the famous Neanderthal discovered in Africa in the 1950s.
There is every chance in fact that Lucy herself may have been instrumental in the development of it. In any case she certainly would have known the people who were, as it was a fairly small, tight-knit community back then, and everybody knew everyone.
The position we associate with canines was probably not practised until much later, perhaps a week or 10 days tops, but it is here we begin to see a difference in opinion among many of the top scientists bothering to dedicate so much time to the study.
Most scientists believe that early primates must have witnessed animals practising sex at some stage; others believe early primates and humans were actually the architects of most of the top eight sexual positions and that the other lesser mammals, such as dogs and chickens, loyally copied the moves and later got all the credit.
Is it a case of monkey see, monkey do, asks groin rash specialist Dr Bellows, who believes the latest evidence is clearly pointing toward the early humans or primates taking the initiative, and the other animals following suit, often against their will.
This opinion is backed by Swedish expert Yorgan Abrahamson, who has just completed a 15-year study on the relationship between non-human mammals and pornography. Yorgan's study shows humans are the only mammals that use porn in any way, shape or form, and this fact alone, said Abrahamson, suggested that humans or primates were more likely to have invented the bulk of the sanctioned top eight sexual positions. This is an egg-and-chicken kind of argument. Incidentally, Yorgan is an expert in vehicle car airbag technology and was fired from Volvo for wasting company time and funds on his pointless independent study.
It was only recently that anthropologists accepted chimpanzees used tools, specifically twigs, to extract insects from inside tree stumps. Yorgan believes that if chimpanzees watched humans using battery powered sex tools for long enough, it would only be a matter of time before they followed suit, at least until the batteries ran out.
This experiment would go a long way towards proving his theory it is the higher order primates, such as humans, that dictate terms and conditions when it comes to sex.
Attempting to find out exactly how and when a sexual position came about is not an exact science. Archaeology, biology, history and ancient pornography all play a part, but at the end of the day often it is guess work.
Amid the preserved bodies at Pompeii are two people fused together performing what looks like the sexual position the Funky Rabbit.
This doesn't mean it was the first time such an activity was attempted, but it does serve to give a rough timeline of events. We now know this position was practised and documented by Greek philosopher Plato 1000 years prior to Mt Vesuvius erupting.
