Who says people back in the day didn’t know how to party? It turns out that China’s Han dynasty — which existed from 206 BCE to 220 CE — was all about the kinky stuff, even going so far as to include it in their burial rituals. IFL Science recently got in touch with the curator of a Chinese archeological exhibition traveling to San Francisco from February 17 until May 28, 2017.
The curator of the exhibit gave them the dirty on how the aristocrats in the Han dynasty experimented with sex toys, including bronze dildos and jade butt plugs.via IFL Science:
Jade was a revered material at the time. Virtually priceless in its value, its purity and beauty were believed to ward off spiritual and bodily decay. The material was used to create “death-suits” for the bodies of the super-rich, made up of hundreds of tiles sewn together with golden threads. Embalmers also used butt plugs made of the rare stone to prevent “the loss of vital essences” from the body.
“The jade plugs are used to seal the body and keep in vital essences that can leak out during life and death,” exhibition curator Fan Zhang explained in an emailed statement to IFLScience. “Basically, it is to maintain the chi. The most important orifice was the mouth, and we have a beautiful example of a mouth seal in the shape of a cicada in the exhibition.”
..
“Useable bronze dildos are still relatively rare finds, though far from unheard of, and they are occasionally found in elite tombs,” Zhang added. “They were all definitely made for use, and we can speculate based on their various bases how they were worn. They’re all bespoke, and the ones we have here might have been laced into place with leather or silk thongs, though it’s not clear if they were designed for men or women — they’re not heavy at all — though the phallus without the ring form was likely for a man since it was found in a king’s tomb.”
This discovery gives me some ideas for the next Indiana Jones movie. Indy has to discover a secret ancient dildo stash stolen from ancient tombs by Nazis. That’s one Shia Labeouf movie I’d actually watch.
[H/T: IFL Science]
