Gay Cavemen

People have always been gay, even 9,000 years ago.

INTRO

Check out our new cloth fans in 7 different pride flags and our Gay Couple's Coupon book, available now at ProfessorPride.com.

We have long heard the argument that being gay is some new-age idea that only came about in the 1970's which is coincidentally right after the Stonewall Riots in 1969 when LGBTQ people started winning back our freedoms and equal rights. So, it's not so much of a new-age idea as it is just being seen for the first time by a world hell-bent on hiding us.

On this show, we've already covered how being gay is not a sin in any major religion of the world and how it's embedded deep in your DNA. So, that begs the question, can we trace being homosexual back in time? Well, archeologists have been working to find an answer to this.

So, let's take a trip back in time to around 7,000 before the common era - meaning over 9,025 years ago. We're going to explore a section of the world on the northeastern end of modern-day China.

It's a rockin' good time back in a time period which will come to be known as the Neolithic period, otherwise known as the New Stone Age. Cavemen are learning to adapt to a new world where they no longer need to hunt and gather for food but rather grow their own plants and have domesticated animals for meat. They build new stone tools to help them cultivate crops and herd animals.

Many of the cavemen in this era lived alongside the Yellow River or smaller riverways for easy access to water and fish. They communicated in a long-passed language which sadly died out with them. The idea of writing their history in books or even on parchment would not be invented for thousands of years until the 2nd century.

These cavemen left very little behind besides their burial sites, tools, crafts, and the foundations of their homes. But from this, we do know they lived on a diet of rice, they had domesticated dogs and pigs, and they enjoyed making pottery.

But how do we know so much about a culture 9,000 years ago that never wrote any words down to tell us their story? Well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. They believed the higher social class needed to be honored in the afterlife so they buried them in caves with ornate jewelry they made from stone, pottery, or bronze.

These caves would be lined with drawings on the walls of their story in what is believed to be a primitive way to preserve their life or help them move on to whatever is next. But it's through these carvings in cave walls that archeologists found an amazing discovery.

In the late 1980's, Chinese archeologist Wang Binghua discovered petroglyphs, which are a form of art carved in the stone walls of caves. Years later, Jeannine Davis-Kimball, an expert on Eurasian nomads, was the first archeologist from the Western world to see the petroglyphs. While she wrote extensively in scholarly journals about these petroglyphs, what lies in this cave remains obscure from history books, mostly because of the severe distance you have to travel in the middle of nowhere to find the cave.

These images come to us from Josh Summers, an explorer of ancient Chinese civilizations who says the Chinese government wanted to make the site of this cave into a national park but it was never feasible because of its distance from any civilization.

But in this remote cave, archeologists found carvings on cave walls, which they called Kangjiashimenji (Kan-josh-E-mon-Za) Petroglyphs. In this one drawing, you can see over 100 figures from just a few inches tall to over 9 feet, or 3 meters tall. Women in the carving are depicted with an hourglass shape and men with a more rectangular body.

Unlike others carved years later by other cavemen, these petroglyphs showcase men in various sexual activities and men engaging in sexual acts with other men. Others in the carving showcase female and male partnerships, suggesting a bisexual nature to their lives.

Remember, religion didn't exist yet so there was no one condemning anyone from being with someone of the same sex and archeologists believe same-sex relationships may have played a vital role in strengthening alliances or fulfilling personal desires among cavemen.

If a birth parent passed away, a same-sex couple could look after the young and teach them how to survive. A male on the hunt for the tribe's next meal could strengthen his alliance with another caveman by forming a physical bond. And, as these petroglyphs describe, sexuality could be something no one had to hide as 100 people held same-sex and bisexual relationships in this one tribe alone.

We do have to note that the word homosexual was not coined until 1868 by Karoly-Maria Benkert and certainly nowadays, gay has a much larger meaning. But it's fascinating to know being gay can be traced back through the ages - all the way to cavemen.

There are many other instances of gay couples in history from Pompeii, Ancient Egypt, and more which we'll have to explore in future history episodes but it's not like gay people just appeared out of nowhere in the 1970's. We've been here the whole time. Religion appeared and pushed us in a closet - too afraid we would be seen. And now that we're coming out again, they accused us of being here for the first time.

In my opinion, maybe some homophobes need to learn how object permanence works before accusing us of being a magical power that can just appear from thin air. The truth is, homosexuality has been here longer than humans have walked the earth with archeologists now suggesting even some dinosaurs were gay. But for now, all we know for certain, thanks to carvings on cave walls in northeastern China, the cavemen who walked the earth 9,000 years ago weren't afraid to carve their same-sex love in the stone for all who came after to find.

OUTRO