Is This America’s Oldest Condom?

Image credit: 
Sara Rivers-Cofield, MAC Lab

Sara Rivers-Cofield has something a little unsavory sitting on her desk: a fragile, round-tipped sheath dug out of an abandoned well that she thinks could be the oldest surviving condom in North America.

A curator at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, or MAC Lab, Rivers-Cofield found the suspected condom in April 2015 when she was looking for artifacts to put in an exhibit tied to the time-travel TV series Outlander. The English goods that dominated 18th century colonial Maryland are comparable with objects featured in the scenes depicting 1740s Scotland, she says.

In search of a silk ribbon for the exhibit, Rivers-Cofield went to a cabinet at MAC Lab containing small organic items that had been found in a well decades ago at Oxon Hill Manor, a slave-owning plantation just south of Washington, D.C., overlooking the Potomac River. The well was used as a trash pit between the 1720s and 1750s. When it was excavated in the 1980s, archaeologists found an array of household garbage, including bottle corks, tobacco leaves, broken porcelain dishes, grass clippers, wooden pieces of musical instruments, and cloth and silk fragments.

She also came across an object labeled “paper?” Immediately, she thought: condom.

“In terms of its dimensions, it’s clearly the right shape and everything,” Rivers-Cofield told mental_floss. “I had seen 18th-century references to condoms, so I knew it was a possibility. My guess would be that whoever originally treated the artifact was probably reminded of a condom, too, but maybe they didn’t know [condoms] could date back to the 18th century. The artifact just needed someone who had seen those period references to make the connection.”

An 18th-century “sheath.” Image Credit: British Museum // CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

 
Humans have been using condoms made from animal guts and bladders for thousands of years to prevent pregnancy and, eventually, disease. But given the private (and biodegradable) nature of early condoms, it’s probably not surprising that there aren’t many examples from the archaeological record. The world’s oldest surviving condoms date back to the 1640s: a pig intestine condom found complete with its user manual in Sweden, and another 10 condoms that were excavated from a latrine at Britain’s Dudley Castle.

“Our one example is probably more of a fluke of survival than having anything to do with whether condoms were actually here,” Rivers-Cofield said. “I’m sure they must have been here.”

Historical records suggest that by the 18th century, condoms were widespread in Europe. (It’s also around this time that condoms were first mentioned in English medical literature—in a book about gonorrhea by the unfortunately named William Cockburn.) They were sold in markets, pubs, brothels, and barbershops, much to the predictable dismay of the era’s moralists. In 1705, John Campbell, the 2nd Duke of Argyll, unsuccessfully tried to get the contraceptives banned in Britain. He even brought a linen condom to the floor of the Parliament and waved it around proclaiming that the devices were “debauching of a great number of Ladies of qualitie, and young gentlewomen.”

Others reveled in the debauchery afforded by condoms, and writers in the 18th century came up with plenty of euphemisms—night caps, French letters, machines, preservatives—to talk about the devices. Scottish writer James Boswell wrote about using “armor” in his outdoor dalliances with sex workers in London. Legendary Italian womanizer Giacomo Casanova spoke of using “English raincoats” during his trysts. He even claims he found condoms in the drawer of a French nun he was having an affair with.

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) and a male pal entertain their lady friends by blowing up condoms like balloons in this engraving from an 1872 book, published nearly a century after Casanova died. Image Credit: Library of Congress // Public Domain

Meanwhile, the American colonies, thanks to their puritanical origins, had a reputation for being rather sexually constrained. In her book The Humble Little Condom, Aine Collier notes that there aren’t many references to colonial condom use in the mid-18th century. It wasn’t until the few decades after the American Revolution that condoms started to be openly sold and discussed in metropolitan centers like New York and Philadelphia. But even then, the subject was a little taboo. A French immigrant who found success selling fine Parisian condoms at his bookshop in Philadelphia in the 1790s still had to pay ships’ captains to smuggle his wares to the U.S., according to Collier’s book.

Rivers-Cofield said there are no sources that talk about condom use in the Chesapeake region in the first half of the 18th century. The Addison family who owned Oxon Hill was a wealthy bunch of merchants and planters with access to the trade networks that presumably would have allowed them to order condoms from a major production center like London.

But Rivers-Cofield isn’t hopeful that she’ll find a paper trail that leads her to an answer about who used this condom and why. “I don’t think it’s going to show up in a probate inventory,” Rivers-Cofield said. “I don’t think it’s going to show up in a ship’s bill of lading. I don’t think we’re going to figure out all of the secrets of it because it’s a private object. I would presume that because it is a private object that this would have surreptitiously been thrown in the well. But again, I don’t really know how open people there were about sexuality. Is it possible that the women were like, ‘Listen I need a break from the kids for a little bit?’ There are so many possibilities.”

She presented her discovery earlier this month at the annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Fort Worth, Texas. Now she’s hoping to find a willing biology student to help her confirm with a DNA test that the suspected condom is really made from sheep’s gut.


January 25, 2017 – 11:00am

Newsletter Item for (77345): 9 Fun Facts About Fruit Roll-Ups

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9 Fun Facts About Fruit Roll-Ups
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Which is better, Fruit Roll-Ups or Fruit by the Foot? This list of little-known facts about Fruit Roll-Ups might be what’s needed to settle the decades-long debate.

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Food
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9 Fun Facts About Fruit Roll-Ups

Ötzi the Iceman Probably Loved Bacon Too

Image credit: 
Andrea Solero/AFP/Getty Images

The last meal of Ötzi the Iceman, the Copper-Age mummy discovered frozen in Alpine ice along the Austrian-Italian border in 1991, was a dry-cured meat similar to speck, prosciutto, or bacon, according to Gizmodo and The Local.

Ötzi, who was probably around 45 years old when he was murdered in 3300 BCE, is housed at the European Academy of Bolzano’s EURAC-Institute for Mummies and the Iceman. Researchers have thawed his body and have been studying his stomach contents for insights into his life. The latest research from Albert Zink, who heads up the Institute for Mummies, shows that his stomach contained the remains of raw, dry-cured goat meat. The nanostructure of the meat fibers showed that the goat was not cooked or grilled at all.

“It seems probable that his last meal was very fatty, dried meat—perhaps a type of Stone Age speck or bacon,” Zink told The Local. He was pretty likely to have had a stomachache, too, since previous research findings showed that his stomach contained a bacteria that can result in ulcers or inflammation of the stomach lining in modern-day humans.

And like modern-day hikers carrying beef jerky, Ötzi probably brought his snack from elsewhere, since he wasn’t carrying a hunting bow (though he did have a quiver) that would have allowed him to take down animals for a fresh dinner.

Now we know: The allure of dry-cured meats is timeless. If you’re interested in delving into the Iceman further, EURAC has a high-definition collection of photos of his entire body (including his tattoos) at IcemanPhotoscan.eu.

[h/t Gizmodo]


January 24, 2017 – 3:30pm

What’s the Kennection?

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Content not scheduled for publishing.


Tuesday, January 24, 2017 – 15:01

Quiz Number: 
124

The 12-Year-Old Who Fought In the Civil War

Heritage Auctions // Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, John Clem decided to enlist in the Union Army. There was just one problem: The Ohio resident was just 9 years old. Undeterred by his youth, Clem forced his way into the conflict. By the time he was discharged near the end of the war, he had not only seen active combat but had become a national folk hero as well—and he wasn’t even 13.

Yet with folk heroes come folktales. Once a real person’s deeds achieve near-mythic status in public perception, hearsay tends to bury fact. While much of Clem’s story is 100 percent verifiable, he did make a few claims that some historians question. Here’s what we know for sure.

“I’D LIKE MIGHTY WELL TO BE A DRUMMER BOY”

The son of French-German immigrants, Clem was born in Newark, Ohio on August 13, 1851. Though his parents christened him John Joseph Klem, he later changed the spelling of his last name to “Clem” because he felt it sounded more American. (Clem would later adopt Lincoln as a replacement middle name.) Vegetable farming was the family business, and growing up, John pitched in by selling their freshly-grown produce door-to-door, with his younger siblings Lewis and Elizabeth usually tagging along. Sadly, the children lost their mother, Magdalene, when she was hit by a train when crossing railroad tracks in 1861. John’s father, Roman, quickly remarried, and although their stepmother was kind to the children, John would soon disappear.

John’s interest in military service had begun shortly after Confederate rebels fired on Fort Sumter, officially starting the U.S. Civil War. At one point, he approached the Third Ohio Regiment of Volunteers, which happened to be passing through Newark, and asked the commanding officer to take him on as their drummer boy. “He looked me over, laughed, and said he wasn’t enlisting infants,” Clem later wrote. But he wasn’t willing to let the matter drop. His sister Elizabeth later recalled that as the family sat eating dinner one night in May 1861, “Johnnie said … ‘Father, I’d like mighty well to be a drummer boy. Can’t I go into the Union army?’ ‘Tut, what nonsense boy!’ replied father, ‘You are not yet 10 years old!’”

After the Klems finished eating, John announced that he was going out for a swim. Instead, he ran away from home.

In his 1914 autobiographical essay “From Nursery to Battlefield,” Clem claimed that he took a train to Cincinnati, where he approached the Twenty-Second Michigan Regiment. Supposedly, this unit also rejected him at first, but he followed it around anyway until the men gradually accepted him as their drummer boy. Since he couldn’t legally be put on the payroll, the adults dug into their own pockets and pooled together a $13 monthly allowance. They also supplied Clem with, as he put it, “a soldier’s uniform, cut down by the regimental tailor from a man’s size.”

The historical record shows that at just 11, John Clem was made a private within that regiment on May 1, 1863. Little did he know that he was about to dive into a clash of historic and devastating proportions.

FROM CHICKAMAUGA TO ICON

After Gettysburg, the Battle of Chickamauga had the second-highest body count of any battle in the Civil War. For three days beginning on September 18, 1863, Union and Confederate forces tore into each other around the Chickamauga Creek in northern Georgia. The rebels’ goal there was to thwart a southward Union march. They succeeded, but it was a costly victory: By the time the battle ended, it had claimed the lives of 34,000 men—including 18,000 Confederates.

John Clem and the Twenty-Second Michigan Infantry were a part of that repelled northern advance. “At Chickamauga, I carried a musket, the barrel of which had been sawed off to a length suitable to my size,” Clem wrote in “From Nursery to Battlefield.” On the final day of the battle, Clem said he found himself behind enemy lines, where he shot and wounded a charging Confederate Colonel. Clem describes the incident in his essay, writing that the man “rode up and yelled at me ‘Surrender, you damned little Yankee!’” Rather than drop his gun, Clem pulled the trigger, and knocked the officer from his horse.

Up north, word quickly got around that a 12-year-old had shot a rebel officer. For unionists who’d grown desperate for some sliver of good news from the Georgian front, the story was a welcome rallying cry. The press nicknamed Clem “The Drummer Boy of Chickamauga” and, as news of his heroics spread across the Union, Clem quickly became a celebrity. Soon, his wardrobe got a free makeover thanks to some Chicago women who had obtained the boy’s measurements from his comrades and sent him a new handmade uniform.

Meanwhile, the war raged on. Just a few weeks after the battle that made him famous came to an end, Clem was captured in Georgia by Confederate forces. He was brought before Joseph Wheeler, then a Major General, who allegedly said, “See to what sore straits the Yankees are driven, when they have to send their babies to fight us!”

Two months later, Clem was set free as part of a prisoner exchange. The Drummer Boy of Chickamauga spent the remainder of the war serving under General George H. Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland. He was wounded twice and participated in such major battles as those of Kennesaw and Atlanta before being discharged in September 1864.

With the war nearing its end, Clem returned to civilian life, graduating from high school in 1870. His next move was applying to the U.S. Military Academy. Despite his decorated battlefield experience, the young man failed his entrance exam several times over—but by then, his celebrity was so well established that President Ulysses S. Grant felt compelled to intervene and make Clem a Second Lieutenant in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Regiment on December 18, 1871.

Clem went on to graduate from Fort Monroe’s artillery school, took part in the Spanish-American War, and rose to the rank of Colonel. In 1915, when he retired, he became a Brigadier General (a tradition for retiring Civil War veterans). It was a truly historic departure: Before Clem left the military, he was the last Civil War veteran to serve the U.S. Army.

In 1916, Congress honored Clem by promoting him to Major General. He died on May 13, 1937, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

A LEGACY ON TRIAL

Did Clem really do everything he claimed to have done? In his lifetime, his supposed exploits in the Civil War were broadly accepted as fact. But today, some are skeptical of these anecdotes.

Consider this: In his autobiographical essay “From Nursery to Battlefield,” Clem states that he accompanied the Twenty-Second Michigan to the Battle of Shiloh, where a “fragment of a shell” totaled his drum. According to Clem, his comrades then gave him the nickname “Johnny Shiloh,” which Disney went on to use as the title of a 1963 movie about his life. There’s just one problem: The Battle of Shiloh was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862—and the Twenty-Second Michigan wasn’t established until the following summer. In fact, the new regiment didn’t even start recruiting troops until July 15.

Historians have their theories about this discrepancy. Some believe Clem wasn’t at the battle at all, while others suspect that he did participate—just with some other regiment. In a conversation with author and history popularizer Henry Howe, Elizabeth seemed to support the latter position. During their exchange, she said that her brother enlisted as the drummer boy of the Twenty-Fourth Ohio Regiment—which saw action at Shiloh—before leaving them to join the Twenty-Second Michigan.

And then there’s the matter of that wounded Confederate tale. In the late 1980s, Greg Pavelka—a park ranger and amateur historian—effectively called Clem a liar. His arguments were published in the January 1989 issue of Civil War Times Illustrated. Pavelka pointed out that Clem couldn’t have fought in the Battle of Shiloh as a member of the Twenty-Second Michigan Infantry. The ranger also dismissed the story about Clem shooting a southern officer at Chickamauga. Pavelka maintained that there was simply no record of a Confederate Colonel being wounded during this particular battle. So, as far as he was concerned, Clem must have falsified his war stories.

In Newark, Ohio, the article caused quite a stir. For over 120 years, Clem’s hometown had embraced him as one of its greatest heroes, even naming the local elementary school after him. To settle the debate over Clem’s legacy once and for all, the citizens of Newark invited Pavelka to defend his allegations in a mock “trial.”

The whole community took part. Linda Leffel, a now-retired teacher who worked at John Clem Elementary, has fond memories of the event. “I was thrilled to get the students, teachers, and parents involved in activities taking place the week leading up to the trial,” Leffel told the Newark Advocate in 2015. The school also organized an essay contest for its fifth graders. The winners—James Galbraith and Hila Hayes—were recruited to portray John and Elizabeth Clem at the trial. Clem’s defense was to be presented by Dr. Dean Jauchius, an ex-Marine and Franklin University professor who had collaborated with future Ohio governor James A. Rhodes to co-author a 1959 historical novel about Clem’s life.

On October 14, 1989, the trial began at Newark’s courthouse. Around 350 people showed up to witness the spectacle firsthand, including a number of curious bystanders in full Civil War regalia; a jury (made up of local politicians and public figures) was also in attendance. By far, the most esteemed visitor was General Dwight E. Beach, Clem’s great-grandson.

Once things kicked off, the mock “attorneys” were given 20 minutes each to state their cases. Pavelka reiterated the points he’d made in Civil War Times Illustrated; Jauchius countered by reminding the jury that Clem was only nine years old when his involvement with the Union army began. Clem’s age meant that his enlistment technically wasn’t legal. Hence, the professor argued, the regiment(s) he was involved with probably did not list him in their official rosters, lest they incriminate themselves by doing so. That, in turn, might explain why there’s no record of Clem at Shiloh.

As for the Chickamauga incident, Jauchius maintained that Clem really did shoot a Colonel who went on to become an attorney in Texas. He added that the two met face-to-face many years later, at which point the former Confederate told Clem, “So you’re the little [expletive] who shot me.”

Swayed by Jauchius’s evidence, the jury unanimously found Clem innocent of misrepresenting his war record in any way. “He’s become a legend,” Pavelka said, “and you can’t fight a legend.”

Since then, the city’s love affair with Clem has only grown. Ten years after the trial, sculptor Mike Major unveiled a bronze statue on Main Street. Dedicated to local veterans, it depicts a youthful John Clem tapping away on his war drum. In 2007, the Cincinnati-based film company Historical Productions, Inc. released Johnny, a biopic about the patriot. Naturally, its world premiere was held in Newark.


January 24, 2017 – 3:00pm