Thought on how much size matters

Female selection pressure isn’t the only factor though. The penis is an appendage, and in northern climates would suffer frostbite if too large during very cold winters before clothes and fire were discovered and widely and reliably used (I suspect this is why, when flaccid, smaller penises can almost completely retract inside the body). A large penis is also a liability in fighting, where it makes it easier to strike a glancing blow at the scrotum to which it is connected. In fights for females, hitting one’s opponent in the genitalia would not only have the effect of incapacitating them, but would also make them unable to perform sexually even if they won the fight — quite important for a tribe defending its women against attacks from another tribe, where rapes and/or opportunistic copulations by the victors followed close on the heels of winning the skirmish. Anything to make the target smaller is an evolutionary advantage.

Even so, the human penis has clearly evolved to be larger, probably because of sperm competition pressure where a man who brings a woman to an orgasm is more likely to impregnate her than one who does not. Biologists say that apes in which multiple males compete to impregnate the females (e.g. chimpanzees, bonobos) have much larger penises and testes than apes where one male monopolizes the females (e.g. gorillas). Humans appear to fall toward the multiple males competing end of the spectrum when their genitalia are measured against other apes in proportion to their physical size.

It may not be a matter of female pleasure. A large penis with a large “mushroom” head can actually scoop out the semen of competing males. This characteristic has an obvious evolutionary advantage in any species in which ovulating females copulate with multiple males.

Nope. I stopped at that point. I was much more interested in Classical history itself because it’s the foundation of Western culture today; a culture I am very happy to live in for all its faults. If we were to have a malfunctioning time machine that dropped us 2000 years in the past and couldn’t bring us back there is no question. We’d make our way to Greece or Rome because we would be most comfortable living there. Much would be very different, but the thought processes, the concepts of “reality” and “time”, our sense of justice (to some degree), would be satisfied by living there. Also doesn’t hurt that they bathed frequently and had underground sewers in the nicer sections. One could live very comfortably in Rome.

It can be difficult for us to relate to the sophistication of Classical culture. The intervening middle ages between the Renaissance and the fall of Rome were a huge setback. We lost enormous amounts of information and while the Catholic Church is responsible for saving what we do have from that period, the church also decided what was released to the masses and what wasn’t. Let me put it this way. If you were sick you’d have a much better chance of being cured or successfully operated upon in the Classical world (particularly post-Galen) than you would 1000 years later. You’d have more access to trade, travel, exotic goods, hygiene, and (in particular) education. Our knowledge, relative to the Classical period, only caught-up around the mid-18th century with the ascendancy of the Enlightenment. When the library at Alexandria first burned it was like losing the Library of Congress without any copies. One scholar likened it to Shakespeare by saying, “Imagine we only had a few sonnets, Macbeth, bits and pieces of Hamlet, half of Julius Caesar, and two or three of the minor plays like Troilus and Cressida, The Tempest, and As You Like It.” That is how much was lost. The ancients knew how to make complex machines, navigate oceans, knew the world was round and it’s approximate size, and developed complex mathematics that wouldn’t be improved upon until Newton 1300 years later. During the middle ages, Islamic culture flourished while the west reverted to stone underwear. Islamic scientists improved medicine by developing hospitals and antiseptics, improved upon mathematics and other sciences (particularly astronomy), and generally kept pieces of classical advances alive. If your time machine dropped you off in the middle ages, head for Spain. You’d have the highest standard of living in Europe because Spain was under the Islamic empire. Sadly, Islamic culture was battered by the Crusades to the point that progress stopped, the bifurcated culture slowly ossified, and under the Ottomans, stopped progress altogether. Now they’re dealing with the effects of globalization, widespread communication, and a Westernized world that largely doesn’t find any value in what Islam has to offer.

Amazing where penis size threads go….

It is amazing where PE threads go! If you’ve been following the thread on PE coverage by the Guardian newspaper, you’ll know that Motivated and I have turned it into a debate on philosophy, while constantly apologizing for doing so. The thread was possibly on its last legs anyway, so Thunder granted us permission!

I am a huge fan of Galen. Apart from being a medical pioneer he was a prolific writer, and many of his works still exist. A few of his medical instruments still exist too. He had them specially made to his own designs and it is a credit to his ingenuity that many modern instruments are almost identical in design. It may have been a frightening idea to have cataract surgery in Roman times, but Galen had considerable success.

I wonder what methods Galen would come up with for PE?. I have no doubt he would have begun by hanging up any number of different types of animal penis and attaching weights to them to calculate the effects of stress on the tissues etc. He would, I think, have been more scientific than we are now.

Well I’m just off to the local butchers with a recipe for Indian Torpedo Soup. No prizes for guessing the main ingredient!

Jason,
It appears that you are very well read and its quite pleasurable to read your posts. I agree with you about the ancients and their remarkable knowledge (even by today’s standards). A case in point would be The Great Pyramids…
For anyone who knows anything about The Great Pyramids, its clear that the ancients knew a great deal more than many of our best architects and engineers today. To this very day, there are still unexplained/unsolved mysteries regarding how these stones were moved, how they were cut and how they were fitted with such precision. A typical limestone block weighs about 3 tons. The heaviest granite blocks weigh more than 70 tons.The Pyramid lies in the center of gravity of the continents. It also lies in the exact center of all the land area of the world, dividing the earth’s land mass into approximately equal quarters. The mortar used is of an unknown origin. It has been analyzed and it’s chemical composition is known but even using today techniques it can’t be reproduced. The coordinates seem to indicate that the builders knew a great deal about astronomy and the planet itself. Remarkable, considering that we are talking about a structure from more than 4000 years ago.

Every few months the history channel, or the discovery channel or whoever have an episode where they show how the Egyptians/Druids/Easter Islanders built their wonders using primitive technology. They were smart people who did all that, but there aren’t any unexplained mysteries about it.

Joe,

Thanks for the heads up and the info.

Perhaps Ive recieved outdated information or something. I certainly look forward to watching one of these channels to see exactly what you are talking about however is it possible that these shows were only speculating/theorizing as to how it may have been done using the technology of the time without any reasonable evidence to prove that they actually did it that way.

Btw…Welcome to Thunders. Hope to see you post more often. :)

Thanks. Since they don’t have historical documents describing how it was done, they can’t be sure. Instead, from what I’ve seen, some anthropologist/archaeologist/whoever takes the tools that were known to exist at that time, gets some friends together, and figure out how they could have done it. Of course they can’t be sure that’s how it was done, but since their tools were comparatively simple (and thus had few options) they probably did it very similarly to how the scientist did it. It’s partly to give us some idea about how ancient wonders got here and partly to prove that extraterrestrials probably didn’t build them.

Jason,

Great post earlier about the Greeks and Romans and penis size. It would be great to see a really good book on the history of the penis in thought and society. No doubt, someone will write it some day, if he or she hasn’t already!

Regarding your above comment on Islamic culture, to the best of your understanding, why exactly did the cultural developments in the Islamic world come to such a screeching halt? Yes, the Crusades beat them up significantly, and the culture was then split. But why couldn’t it ever get back on track culturally? I lived in Egypt for a couple of years. That part of the world is as backward as can be. I’ve heard it said that there are more books published each year in Holland than in all of the Middle East. Don’t know if this is true. But the numbers are probably not far off. It’s a shame: Islamic culture of old was truly remarkable. And, as you point out, the learning of the ancients would not have survived to this day if it were not for the ancient and medieval Islamic thinkers and scientists. Will Islamic civilization ever recover?

motivated,

http://www.amaz … /dp/0142002593/

Link is to Amazon.com and the book A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, by David M Friedman. I spotted it at the bookstore a year or two ago, and bought it then. I’ve read much of it.