While often we don’t like to talk about it, most of us do it or will at least do it
sometime or other.
Since the dawn of time we have been making love, and seeing as for about 100,000 years
humans have anatomically been the same, we know those folks we sometimes call cavemen
and cavewomen were getting it on inside their rather sparse homes.
They didn’t, however, have magazines like Cosmopolitan to guide them through their love-making
rituals.
Live Science tells us it wasn’t until the 1800s that we really opened up about what
we got down to under the sheets, and then in the 1960s we really started talking openly
about our desires.
The question is, do we all do it the same way?
We said that western culture started talking more about making love in the 19th century,
but as many of you will know there is a little book called the Kama Sutra and that is said
to have been written sometime in the 3rd century.
The man behind the Kama Sutra, which means something like “treatise of pleasure”
was an Indian sage called Vatsyayana.
The premise of the book is the art of living well, but part of living well was understanding
the art of carnal pleasure.
Contrary to popular opinion, it wasn’t just about certain positions, but also gave advice
on etiquette, marriage, how to be attractive, how to date (sometimes called courting), how
to have affairs and it also gave women advice on what kind of man they should be looking
for.
We are told that in one part it tells women they should give a wide berth to men who talk
a lot, drink too much and to stay well away from guys whose breath smells like crows.
We can’t say we’ve ever smelled a crow here at the Infographics Show, but we imagine
they must stink.
Yep, the book is starting to sound like an ancient version of Cosmopolitan.
But what about making love, what was the advice?
We can of course infer that the advice was heeded, and so 3rd century Indians might have
made love this way.
We should say that there have been many updates to this book, and the positions have been
given lots of names.
We looked at 245 of them and can say many look like some kind of intertwined yoga, or
perhaps a game of Twister in which the two players are connected by the nuts and bolts
we call genitalia.
The book also includes some standard positions, including the coital alignment technique,
aka The Cat, or what some people might call missionary.
No doubt even the cave guys and girls were doing the cat when taking a break from hunting
wooly mammoths.
One of our favorites is The Harp, although it would take a very nimble woman to do her
part in making the instrument.
All we can say without going through every position is that those 3rd century Indians
certainly got creative in bed and some of them must have been very flexible or prone
now and again to painful muscle cramps.
We also know love-making is the whole shebang, not just the coitus part.
Love-making includes kissing, caressing, and whatever one might do as part of sensual pleasure
with another person.
And some cultures just don’t kiss, or at least kissing is not as common as it is in
some parts of the West.
We say not as common because times are changing, and while some grandparents might not have
bumped tongues when they were preparing themselves to create a new generation, their grandkids
might well right now be mixing their saliva with commendable skill.
Research from the University of Nevada tells us that only 48 percent of 168 cultures they
looked at kissed like westerners kiss and some find it kind of gross.
The Mahinku people of Brazil said exactly that.
The Aka pygmies don’t kiss at all, and they even called making love a “night’s work.”
For them getting it on was just about trying to conceive and they certainly weren’t looking
for tips in magazines about how best to tie your lover to the bed post.
One of the researchers said, “Most Western and industrial/post-industrial cultures now
have it, while most small-scale societies (hunter-gatherer, pastoral, small horticultures)
do not.”
There are lots of types of kissing, too.
Some cultures might prefer the “oceanic kiss,” which can be found in some parts
of Malaysia.
This form of kissing means getting close and rubbing an open mouth against another open
mouth without the suction part.
That country’s next door neighbor is Thailand, and traditional kissing there is sometimes
a sniff kiss, which involves putting your nose on someone’s cheek and taking a quick
sniff.
You can read forums where expatriates say when they first encountered this kind of kissing
they thought it was really cute.
Then there’s the well known Eskimo Kiss, which just means rubbing noses.
You can find this all over South East Asia, but also within the Māori of New Zealand,
Bengali people and of course Innuits.
Now let’s move onto more intense foreplay.
We should say that not all cultures have this kind of thing, and like Aka pygmies some cultures
get right down to business for the most part.
Putting one’s head in certain places is seen as impolite in some cultures around the
world.
Again, we must stress that a lot has changed in the last few decades and young people will
have very different love-making methods than old people in some or probably most cultures.
Talk to grandpa about the scissoring technique that you’ve nailed and he might give you
a blank look, although the sage that wrote the Kama Sutra would probably give you a pat
on the back and a gold star.
In fact, one researcher said that many people in Eastern cultures will engage in foreplay,
simple caressing and the rest, for very long periods of time.
That person wrote, “In Western cultures, varied patterns of foreplay can be found,
but these all tend to be short in duration and to be seen as something that leads up
to the ‘main event’ of intercourse.”
According to him, in the East many partners might just do this without a main event, while
in the West it’s seen as merely a preamble to the main course – call it an aperitif
for some or perhaps amuse-bouche for the more creative of us.
The same writer said many cultures have their own ways of providing this arousal.
He wrote that the Trobrian Islanders of Melanesia for instance might bite each other’s lips
until they see blood, which is apparently enjoyable for them.
More research informs us that the Apinaye women of South America might take a bite of
their partner’s eyebrow to arouse him, while that same article tells us the Trukese females
of the South Pacific will sometimes poke a finger in one of the ears of their lover.
Live Science tells us that in some parts of rural Austria part of arousing a man might
be for the woman to put a slice of apple under her sweaty armpit and give it to him to eat.
The Huffington Post, however, says this doesn’t happen anymore.
We can’t understand why…Overall, we are told that for the most part the more developed
a country is the more people might be inclined to spice up their love-making with pre-coitus
playing.
For instance, just in 2018 the Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni said outside influences were
corrupting the Ugandan public.
He said, “Mouths should be for eating.”
You know what he was referring to.
We are not quite sure if the public agrees with him, though.
We might add that certain techniques for arousal were illegal in many countries in the past,
including parts of the USA, so it’s not hard to see why grandparents might not have
been very experimental love-makers.
There are also differences in preparation, especially in tribal cultures.
You probably didn’t know that In Mangaia, an island in the South Pacific Ocean, the
young boys will be given an experienced woman to make love to so that they will learn quickly.
In the Sambian Tribe of New Guinea we are told boys’ preparation involves drinking
a very natural cocktail made from the strongest warriors in the tribe.
Such initiations might also happen in other cultures, but they are dying out in most societies.
The British healthcare company Dr. Felix went all around the world and tried to understand
bedroom habits.
It tells us that Indians are the most satisfied in their love-making, which might have something
to do with that great book created over there.
We are also informed that Scandinavians have the most one night stands, while the Danes
apparently had the most affairs.
The survey said English speaking countries get up to the kinkiest action, but another
survey cited by Vox said people from Nigeria and Mexico have the most exciting time under
the sheets.
As for countries where people complained of not getting enough physical love, Japan won
the gold medal followed by the United States.
That survey also asked when people started making love, and it seems South Americans
were doing it on average at the youngest age.
Asians waited the longest, with Europe and North America in the middle.
As for how long we make love, that’s complicated because every survey we looked at had different
results.
The Conversation website had perhaps the most reliable data and it said it could last anywhere
from 33 seconds to 44 minutes.
Couples all over the world were told to write down their session results and give back data
after a few weeks.
It was found that the world average was somewhere around 5.4 minutes.
In all, it could be fast or slow, but averages around the world were pretty much all around
the 4-5 minute mark.
Other surveys tell us that the Greeks were making love the most, but the Thais were doing
it most in cheat-mode.
We might add here that up until recent times in parts of Asia, such as Thailand, Japan,
China and elsewhere, a woman was quite subservient towards a man.
Men might have consorts, second wives, while it is only in the last couple of decades that
women were even open about their desires.
Europeans of course, the men at least, openly had mistresses too, but we have to go back
further in time.
Still, in many parts of the world today it is quite normal for men to have second wives
and mistresses, but
we won’t go into this now.
Well, the best thing we can do now is ask all of you international love-makers what
you think about all this?
Many of you might still be young.
Do you think years back love-making was any different where you come from?
How is it now?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show What Happens To Your Body While You Are Having
An Intercourse.
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.