September 2002
News

Lecturer reveals mysteries of Stone Age sec

An Archaeological Sciences lecturer travelled back 26,000 years to look at the evidence of sexual practices left by our earliest European ancestors for a new Channel Four documentary series.

Sex BC asked questions such as 'Can a mysterious triple burial give us clues about the earliest sexual taboos?' and 'What do the small clay figures of women found across Europe tell us about prehistoric sexuality?' The first programme was based on Dr Timothy Taylor's book 'The Prehistory of Sex', in which he pieces together evidence from highly controversial artefacts and human remains to decipher the mysteries of Stone Age sex.

Timothy said: "In the course of my research, I found sexual diversity to be a constant and vital force in human development. Sexuality cannot be understood in purely biological terms, and culture plays just as important a role. Only by accepting this, can we understand how we increased our mental capacities beyond those of the other primates, lost our body hair, and expanded out of Africa to colonise the rest of the world."

Filming for the programme took Timothy from Catalhuyuk in Turkey to Skara Brae in Orkney. During his travels, he discusses the Venus de Villendorf, which dates back to 30,000 to 15,000 BC, and is given a rare opportunity to handle the stone goddess.

In his book, Timothy delves into the familiar: marriage, birthing, child-rearing; and the fringe: bestiality, body piercing, orgies. From cave art to penis sheaths, from the personal tragedies of death in childbirth to the grand symbols of Stonehenge, the book is a collection and analysis of a wide range of artefacts and written records relevant to the sexual history of mankind.

Timothy's new book, 'The Buried Soul: How We Invented Death', is out this month. The book charts the story of the human response to death from prehistory to the present day. Retracing four million years, this book investigates the many ways that our descendants have come face to face and dealt with the idea of life. Many of these encounters have been passed down, accounts of sacrifices in early histories, rituals that have stood the test of time, bodies discovered in caves and bogs, and remains revealed by archaeological digs.Through these insights into the past, Dr Taylor pieces together evidence of how our ancestors created their universe - both physical and mental - and the possibility of the afterlife.

'The Buried Soul: How We Invented Death' is priced £20. The 'Prehistory of Sex' costs £8.99. Both are published by Fourth Estate and available from the University's Waterstone's bookshop.

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