Romance sex
Zamora, late 10th century. On the banks of the Douro River and outside the city walls the church of Santiago de los Caballeros was built. The inside capitals of the church depict varied scenes with sexual content: an orgy, a naked woman holding the penis of a man… in the capitals of the Collegiate of San Pedro de Cevantos (Cantabria), in the church of San Nicolás de Teza de Losa (Burgos) and in many other Romanesque churches similar sexual scenes were also sculpted.
So far, several hypotheses have been made about the objective of explicit images, according to which reliefs would represent sin, actions to avoid and, therefore, these capitals would be the appeal to chastity. But Vitorian art historian Isabel Mellén has received a very different view in her book Sex in Time of the Romanesque (Critical). For Mellén, the interpretation of these Romanesque reliefs uses contemporary prejudices and taboos and he has opted for a more natural vision. Sex at that time was more normalized than was thought, especially among nobles. The historian has researched above all the nobility in his work, since they were the ones who built many Romanesque churches. They were therefore in charge of choosing the figures that would decorate the temple. “They had prosperous sexual habits, because having children strengthened the lineage. The family was above the individual and, therefore, sex was in the center.” It relates these images with the values of nobility, with the need for children to be heirs. So they often represent scenes of pregnancy or childbirth.
The turning point came in the 11th century. It was then that the extreme rigidity of the church occurred. A minority of the clergy began to associate sex with sin and “that idea gradually entered society until we reached that taboo that we have today of corporality”. The Alavés says that genitality was something everyday, because they didn't have the concept we have of intimacy in the Middle Ages.
The change was not abrupt. At first, the citizens did not listen to these fellow clergy, but laughed at them if they took into account what had been collected in the literature of the time. But the crusade against sex would achieve its goal. “He departed from a small church nucleus that wants to change sexual habits and wants to increase his power, and eventually they managed to get into bed all over the world.”
Copenhagen, 18 December 1974 At 12 noon a ferry arrived at the port, from where a group of about 100 Santa Claus landed. They brought a gigantic geese with them. The idea was to make a kind of “Trojan Goose” and, upon reaching the city, to pull the white beard costumes... [+]
Tennessee (United States), 1820. The slave Nathan Green is born, known as Nearest Uncle or Nearest Uncle. We do not know exactly when he was born and, in general, we have very little data about him until 1863, when he achieved emancipation. We know that in the late 1850s Dan... [+]
New York, 1960. At a UN meeting, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister and UN ambassador Jaja Wachucu slept. Nigeria had just achieved independence on 1 October. Therefore, Wachuku became the first UN representative in Nigeria and had just taken office.
In contradiction to the... [+]
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered several cylinders with inscriptions at the present Syrian Reservoir, the Tell Umm-el Marra. Experts believe that the signs written in these pieces of clay can be alphabetical.
In the 15th century a. The cylinders have... [+]
London 1928. At the Victoria and Albert Museum there was a very special painting: in the painting there is a black man, with wig and Levite, surrounded by books and scientific instruments. Thus it was catalogued in the Museum: “Unique satirical portrait representing a failed... [+]
Ethiopia, 24 November 1974. Lucy's skeleton was found in Hadar, one of the oldest traces of human ancestors. The Australian hominid of Australopithecus afarensis is between 3.2 and 3.5 million years old.
So they considered it the ancestor of species, the mother of all of us. In... [+]
A group of archaeologists from the University of Berkeley, California, USA. That is, men didn't launch the lances to hunt mammoths and other great mammals. That was the most widespread hypothesis so far, the technique we've seen in movies, video games ...
But the study, published... [+]
Born 7 November 1924. A group of anarchists broke into Bera this morning to protest against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and to begin the revolution in the Spanish state.
Last October, the composition of the Central Board was announced between the displaced from Spain... [+]
A group of interdisciplinary researchers from the Free University of Berlin and the Zuse Institute have developed a complex mathematical model to better understand how Romanization spread in North Africa.
According to a study published in the journal Plos One, the model has... [+]
Washington (EE.UU. ), 1807. The US Constitution banned transatlantic slave trade. This does not mean that slavery has been abolished, but that the main source of the slaves has been interrupted. Thus, slave women became the only way to “produce” new slaves.
So in 1845, in... [+]
While working at a site in the Roman era of Normandy, several archaeology students have recently made a curious discovery: inside a clay pot they found a small glass jar, of which women used to bring perfume in the 19th century.
And inside the jar was a little papelite with a... [+]
Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States launched an atomic bomb causing tens of thousands of deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; although there are no precise figures, the most cautious estimates indicate that at least 210,000 people died at the end of that year. But in... [+]
Born 2 October 1968. A few months earlier, the student movement started on June 22 organized a rally in the Plaza de las Tres Cultura, in the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco unit of the city. The students gathered by the Mexican army and the paramilitary group Olympia Battalion were... [+]
A team of researchers led by the Japanese archaeologist Masato Sakai of the University of Yamagata has discovered numerous geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert (Peru). In total, 303 geoglyphs have been found, almost twice as many geoglyphs as previously known. To do so, researchers... [+]