Today, I heard a report on Radio National (it can probably be downloaded for those interested) about 'cave paintings' and the sex life of early man.

I've never heard anything about this before, so it caught my ears quickly. The thrust of the report was as follows: (warning, "R" rating material to come)

Cave paintings apprently portray the following activities/behaviors.

-Men having sexual relations with small male and female children.
-Men having sexual relations with men and boys.
-Groups of men having sexual relations with each other in a line. (Australian Aboriginal cave painting)
-Men having sexual relations with goats and donkeys.

Clearly, the whole gamut of 'possible' sexual actions were practiced by 'early' man.

Now..this raises some questions.

1/ Should we make value judgements on this behavior and call them 'degenerate' man ?
2/ What occurred to change this behavior or to change the 'perception' of such behavior in the moral sense?

3/ Given that the 'trend' in the mass media, adult industry,Hollywood etc is 'back' towards such behaviors, where the boundaries are constantly being challenged in the name of 'artistic freedom' and 'individual moral choice'.. (u don't like it, you can change the chanel, no one is FORCING you to watch that)

4/ Is a society based on such practices going to be healthy and prosperous?

5/ Is there anything inherrently 'wrong' or "Immoral" with such things?

The problem as I see it, is that the 'make_it_up_as_u_go' mob have serious trouble answering 'yes' to question 5.

I contend, that such practices flourished in the absence of awareness of divine moral code. Feel free to disagree with me here, but in so doing, I hope the disagreers can explain why these practices died out or faded or came to be regarded as 'immoral'....... or did they?

How do the experts know that the paintings weren't done by some degenerate that the tribe had kicked out?

Is Mise.. I haven't a clue... I just heard it and found it rather interesting as a commentary on the 'natural unrestrained man'.

That such practices are still prevalent in some traditional societies is evidence of this. I'm not aware of any of this kind of thing though among tribal people of Borneo. (even in their pre Christian phase) Though they thought nothing of lopping of your head for a trophy.

My original title was edited and changed, thats ok, I think it now has the same title as the program I'm reporting about.

The point the program was making is that "traditionally we have viewed cave man as indulging in sex as an act of procreation, but now we see he was into it for pure pleasure as well". Sadly in the absence of divine restraint, that lust for sexual pleasure manifested itself in ways we consider 'degenerate' today.

Jeez BOAZY, please feel free to read some books on cultural anthropology sometime. It may make comments on prehistoric cultures seem relatively well informed. Something by Jared Diamond is always a good look and quite entertaining if you are actually interested in the subject matter.

Some answers for you:

1/ Should we make value judgements on this behavior and call them 'degenerate' man ?

Value judgements can always be made with the benefit of history and through the blinkered looking glass of whatever morality one wants to impose on such practices. if you want to call them 'degenerate', then you may do so, however anthropologists will probably refrain from such judgements.

2/ What occurred to change this behavior or to change the 'perception' of such behavior in the moral sense?

This behaviour may or may not have been widespread, that is what is currently unknown. However may stone-age hunter-gatherer societies have preserved taboo(to us) practices right up until the modern age, including, but not limited to, human sacrifice, child sex, rape, cannibalism and homosexual acts. Many of these acts have been interpreted through initiation or religious rites. Even christians have a symbolic form of cannibalism.

3/ Given that the 'trend' in the mass media, adult industry,Hollywood etc is 'back' towards such behaviors, where the boundaries are constantly being challenged in the name of 'artistic freedom' and 'individual moral choice'.. (u don't like it, you can change the chanel, no one is FORCING you to watch that)

Were you going to finish this sentence? I don't see a point here.

4/ Is a society based on such practices going to be healthy and prosperous?

"healthy" and "prosperous" are subjective descriptions when you are referring to stone age hunter gatherer societies that were probably no more than small nomadic tribal groups. But nothing can be inferred from probably the only remnant of such groups, the cave art.

5/ Is there anything inherrently 'wrong' or "Immoral" with such things?

Only when making value judgements through the interpretation of an accumulated morality derived through religions that were made possible by agriculture.

cont'd....

"I contend, that such practices flourished in the absence of awareness of divine moral code. Feel free to disagree with me here, but in so doing, I hope the disagreers can explain why these practices died out or faded or came to be regarded as 'immoral'....... or did they?"

The 'divine moral code' theory is not borne out by anthropological study. Actually many of these practices did not "die out" or "fade" for many hunter-gatherer societies and were preserved until modern times and were only erased by colonial religions, and in fact some 'ugly' cultural practices are still being secretly practised in the world.

You wondered what changed, well the answer to most your questions is ultimately...agriculture. Not a spectacular answer but a historically ultimate one. Agriculture has enabled many people to live together and form societies far larger than immediate familial groupings and has enabled a form of religion and philosophy that is unattainable in a stone-age hunter gatherer society. But many of the taboo urges are still there, just ask the catholic clergy.

Another thought that I missed...when discussing "dengeneracy", it kind of implies that it degenerated from something, so that the ancestral state of mankind is a moral one? Is this your point? Or that morality arose from this "degeneracy" to become moral?

If you do think that this "degeneracy" came before morality (which isn't a logically proper use of the word) or the "divine moral code" then that is tantamount to acknowledging that mankind existed and had societies BEFORE recognition of what morality is (or at least our modern version of it). Which I agree with, but would you, really? Most Christians believe that morality did not evolve and is something that God instilled in people and it is something that is innate and only ignored by 'sinners'. What this thread is almost acknowledging is that morality probably evolved and the values we have today are ones that enable a large civilisation to exist.

If you think that the "divine moral code" has always existed, then you would probably believe that the cave paintings are just an ancient form of degenerate porn, or that particular society was an anomoly of history. But anthroplogy and psychology inform us that many of these 'taboo' acts were not prevalent in most societies (at least on a day-to-day basis), but when they were practised they were often ritualistic and linked to status and social control, similar to genital mutilation and the rape of lower status individuals and other acts still practised in various parts of the world today.