Frankster said:
Not convinced about the paintings on cave walls argument though, i really can't picture cavemen jacking off in the tribal cave and at the risk of derailing the thread with musings on the history of masturbation, id reckon the discovery of self pleasure happened when there was some form of civilization and privacy for those involved, when life for humans became more then a struggle vs nature.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree, with the reason being that plenty of other species, PARTICULARLY the most social ones, masturbate for pleasure (in public) or otherwise do plenty of sexual things that many would assume only humans do.
The crowning master of sex, far more open than us prude humans, is the Bonobo, the third-closest living relative to humanity. They exhibit, including but not limited to, these sexual acts: Sex for pleasure, selling sex for food, using sex to settle disagreements, using sex as a greeting, sex as a bonding exercise, incest (mother-son, father-daughter, brother-sister, mother-daughter, you name it), homosexuality (MM or FF), oral sex, masturbation...I think that about covers it.
Edit: Nope, I forgot face-to-face sex, making out (with tongue), and penis fencing. Also, I was wrong about one of the incest types, as mother-son sexings are apparently uncommon. Here's where I got the corrections from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sexual_social_behavior
We shouldn't expect masturbation to be hidden away from every social creature or every society. Hell, even within humanity, there are(/were) plenty of cultures that are(/were) rather open about masturbation. That, however, isn't my area of expertise, so I'm just going to post some bits from the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_masturbation
There are depictions of male masturbation in prehistoric rock paintings around the world. Most early people seem to have connected human sexuality with abundance in nature. A clay figurine of the 4th millennium BC from a temple site on the island of Malta, depicts a woman masturbating.[1] However, in the ancient world depictions of male masturbation are far more common.
From the earliest records, ancient Sumer had a relaxed attitude toward sex, and masturbation was a popular technique for enhancing potency, either alone or with a partner.[2][3]
The ancient Indian Hindu text Kama Sutra explains in detail the best procedure to masturbate; "Churn your instrument with a lion's pounce: sit with legs stretched out at right angles to one another, propping yourself up with two hands planted on the ground between in them, and it between your arms".[4]
Male masturbation was an even more important image in ancient Egypt: when performed by a god it could be considered a creative or magical act: the god Atum was believed to have created the universe by masturbating to ejaculation, and the ebb and flow of the Nile was attributed to the frequency of his ejaculations. Egyptian Pharaohs, in response to this, were at one time required to masturbate ceremonially into the Nile.[5]
Hell, according to this article, it's only in RECENT memory that we've gotten really freaking prude about jerking it. Edit: The only reason I could think for masturbation *in public* not being common in ancient history is because there was usually another human to do it for you, but not, from anything I can find or think of, because of it being some hidden thing. Sure, they might not have specifically jerked to cave drawings or anything for some time, but I'm pretty sure that was a slightly tongue-in-cheek comment anyway. In any case, we have at least known about masturbation for most of humanity's existence.
