Homo heidelbergensis. Try saying that three times fast.
According to the Smithsonian, the Homo heidelbergensis lived about 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic era (a.k.a. the Stone Age), in Europe, Asia, and parts of eastern and southern Africa. They are credited with being the first early human species to hunt large animals and build shelters.
And, according to Todd Price over at GayPopBuzz, they were also probably the first hominid group to act upon feelings of same-sex attraction.
“There were likely gay cavemen,” Price writes in a fascinating new article. “What’s more, there were probably Paleolithic tops and bottoms. Shoot, there could have even been versatile cave gays.”
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We bet there were.
So what was hooking up like for these guys anyway?
Price explains that anthropologists really aren’t sure, but most believe there weren’t any laws or religious orders dictating that homosexuality was immoral or wrong. So, chances are, cave people just followed their hearts (or loins) and had sex with whomever they desired without giving it a whole lot of thought.
A writer named Miko over at cavemanworld.com, an online database dedicated to all things caveman, concurs:
During the late Stone Age, tribal social structures were not very complex. The men would hunt, build, and protect the tribe. Women would serve as wives, nurture the young, and look after the village while the men were away hunting.
One theory is when all the males in the tribe went off hunting, some members of the group would develop an attraction towards their fellow hunting partners. Such could be the result of complex interpersonal social interaction between members of the same gender.
Sort of like Brokeback Mountain, but instead of cowboys, it was hunter gatherers.
Then, Price says, there were alpha males. He explains:
Our best guess is that most tribes of the era were led by an alpha male. One has to wonder if (as a sign of respect) the alpha was serviced by the others, meaning cavewomen and men.
Imagine for a moment that you were a gay caveman. Draining out the alpha was probably awesome! If you weren’t gay and gravitated towards the females, it still was probably OK.
That’s because during the Paleolithic era, labels didn’t exist. In fact, language was extremely primitive. Anthropologists think they “spoke” using grunts and hand signals.
Alpha males, Price adds, probably weren’t closeted either because “the only way alphas become alphas (in all animal species) is through skill, size and brute force.”
So what’s the takeaway from all this?
Price writes:
We really don’t know much about early man, let alone gay cavemen… [but] it’s safe to say homosexuality has been part of this world since the earliest primates showed up on the geologic time scale. We think that was sixty-five million years ago.
Miko at cavemanworld.com agrees:
We know that homosexuality is common among other species, including such nearby cousins as Bonono apes. In fact, some studies have indicated that same-sex behavior is evident in nearly all animals, so we should not be surprised to learn of ‘shemale’ cavemen.
The last remaining question, Price says, is more technical than anything.
“What did gay cavemen use for lube?”
Related: Eating like a Caveman: An Argument for the Paleo Diet
Dansktex
Cavemen didn’t need lube. They weren’t circumcised. I’m 72 and have never had to use lube (except for the natural one that I am proficient at producing)!!
Kieran
And there were likely left-handed cavemen too. Amazing.
Raymond Saint-Pierre
Spit, animal fat, bone marrow, oily vegetables?
captainburrito
What oily veg was there that they would have?
Record Man
Woolly mammoth fat?
David Myers
Captain Burrito: Eggplant maybe (also olives)?
IDoNotHaveToAgreeWithYou
Well I changed my mind about global warming. There really are scientists and just make shit up with no real evidence.
verbaltopman
Ah, good ol’ Queerty — creating an article that starts out by referencing Smithsonian, but then merely quoting two websites [GayPopBuzz and Cavemanworld.com] that reference no specific research. Essentially, you’re passing off conjecture and speculation as scientific research, just for the tiniest amount of sexual titillation. You continue to worsen the vapidness that is consuming the gay community.
Tête Carrée
Me like f*ck.
I only mention that because your user name is “verbal top man”, Mr. Deep.
Richard 55
There was no gay identity politics back then, thank goodness. Men felt more free without the gay/straight binary that is forced onto men by the gay community today.
Without feminism, men also had no problem swinging their clubs both ways, either.
Tête Carrée
Like in the feminist free 40s and 50s you mean?
David Myers
Utter clap trap! Gay/Straight binary was not forced onto men by the gay community . . . today . . . or ever! That BS was forced onto society by alpha males who wanted to use it to equate homosexuality with their misogynistic attitudes about women’s inferiority . . . equating gay men with women . . . both being lower on the pecking (and rights) order than the alpha males.
inbama
Homosexuality is not an “identity,” but a physical trait.
Attraction to males, females or both is, by several methods, measurable.
Josh447
Yup “gay identity” implies choice which is demeaning. You don’t say you have a red hair identity, it’s a physical trait. People don’t say ‘I identify as gay’ they say “I’m gay”, i.e. I’m white I’m black etc. Any other term than that is a self created mistaken faux pass designed to alienate and deny the truth of what a person actually is and veers off topic.
badamsthies
Any anthropologist will tell you that gay sex, homosexuality did not exist pre-1800s. People had sex and numerous sorts of sex but these categories thrown around in this article did not exist. A sophomoric understanding of sexuality and gender studies allows one to understand the contextual (socio-cultural and historical) complexities of creating meaning systems around the types of sexual interaction. Homo heidlebergensis wasn’t human. Therefore, the meaning systems they (possibly) created would be very far afield from our 21st century conceptions of sexuality. Finally, there exists quite a bit of archaeological evidence to suggest that gender roles, as described in this ridiculous piece, were not actually lived but rather, projections of our current preoccupations with gender onto the past. This piece is nothing more than a projection of the fantasies of 21st century gay men onto a past they have failed to understand in any sort of manner.
badamsthies
*heidelbergensis
Record Man
They might not have coined the word “homosexuality” before the 1800’s. Various sexual activities may or may not have been categorized that far back in time. But that doesn’t mean that oral, manual, and anal sex between men didn’t happen before 1800.
I don’t think men are having any kind of sex today that hasn’t been around for a very long time. Except for phone sex, of course.
batesmotel
People were more modest and not sleeping with everything that moved back during cavemen days. The mentality is not like it is today regardless of straight, gay, religious, non-religious or whatever.