What are the earliest documented descriptions of pegging-like practices in history?
Executive summary
The practice now called “pegging” — penetration with a strap-on — has a modern name but a deep and messy prehistory: archaeologists and popular historians point to artifacts and images that some interpret as strap-on use as far back as the Upper Paleolithic, while literary and pictorial sources from classical antiquity through the early modern period offer clearer, if often veiled, descriptions [1] [2] [3]. Scholarly caution is necessary because many claims rest on ambiguous artifacts, satirical or legal texts, and modern reinterpretation rather than unambiguous, contemporaneous accounts labeled as the practice is today [4] [5].
1. Earliest material claims: Upper Paleolithic objects and the problem of interpretation
Several contemporary pieces summarizing research assert that archaeologists have found objects resembling strap-on dildos dating to the Upper Paleolithic (roughly 50,000–12,000 years ago), and some popular histories repeat a broad sweep that locates strap-on sex artifacts in ancient China and other regions millennia ago [1] [2] [3]. Those claims, as presented in lifestyle and niche-history outlets, point to the long human use of phallic objects for sexual stimulation or substitution, but these same sources also reflect the interpretive leap required to call a prehistoric phallic object a “strap-on” in anything like the contemporary sense [2] [3]. Academic caution is explicitly noted in overviews that say pre-modern evidence is often indirect — comedic, legal, or confessional — and that historians sometimes avoid blunt labels to prevent presentist misreading [4].
2. Classical and Roman-era evidence: poems and Pompeii murals
More concrete early textual and visual hints appear in the classical period: a fifth‑century BCE Greek poem by Hipponax is cited by multiple accounts as describing anal penetration in ways readers have understood as pegging‑like, and Roman Pompeian imagery includes erotic murals that some interpreters read as depicting women penetrating men with phallic implements [1]. These antiquity sources carry more explicit sexual context than prehistoric objects, but they survive as fragmentary poems, satirical verse, or erotic art whose meanings were contingent and often polemical; therefore they show that such activity was imagined and represented, though not catalogued with modern terminology [1] [4].
3. Medieval, Renaissance and early modern traces: satirists and libertines
From medieval Europe through the Renaissance and onward, references to women using dildos — sometimes as rejoinders to inadequate male performance — appear in satirical and erotic literature; Thomas Nashe’s late‑16th‑century work and later libertine writings, including an 18th‑century passage by the Marquis de Sade, are cited by modern compilers as evidence of strap-on use or at least the literary trope of women employing artificial phalli [4] [6]. Those texts suggest a cultural thread where phallic tools were imagined or employed, yet scholars warn that much surviving material masks real practices behind humor, legal censoring, or erotic fiction, making direct claims about frequency or social acceptability speculative [4].
4. Why modern sources diverge: terminology, publicity and cultural agendas
Contemporary overviews and sex‑education pieces converge on two firm points: the English term “pegging” was coined and popularized by Dan Savage’s 2001 readership contest, and 21st‑century publicity — from sex columns to mainstream TV — has reshaped how the practice is framed and researched [5] [7]. Many popular histories emphasize a long continuity to validate modern sexual diversity or to shock, and commercial or cultural outlets sometimes lean toward sensational or inclusive narratives that outpace careful archaeological or textual scholarship; conversely, some scholars and historians prefer to emphasize the limits of evidence and avoid anachronistic labels [3] [4].
5. Bottom line: the earliest documented descriptions are equivocal but ancient
The earliest claims for pegging‑like activities span the material record (interpreted Upper Paleolithic phallic objects) and classical antiquity (Hipponax and Pompeian imagery), but the evidence is interpretive rather than documentary: prehistoric finds require inference, and ancient texts and art often treat such acts as comic, erotic, or transgressive rather than clinical descriptions [1] [2] [4]. Modern coinage of “pegging” postdates all these sources , meaning the practice predates the term by millennia even as the patchwork of evidence resists a simple, uncontested lineage [5] [7].