Archeologists in Spain have unearthed a cache of prehistoric sex toys believed to have caused the disappearance of the Neanderthals almost 40,000 years ago.
“This extinction was not caused by receding glaciers or increased competition from Homo sapiens, as previously hypothesized,” said Montse Torrens, who is leading the excavation of a site in northwest Spain. “Homo neanderthalensis likely died out soon after inventing a tool meant to simulate a vagina.”
Torrens says the item is similar to a modern-day Fleshlight, a polymer handheld vagina that looks like a flashlight and has become the world’s most popular sex toy. An analysis of one of the Neanderthal items shows that it was made from two pieces of tanned ibex hide with a layer of fat in between and attached to a boar tusk handle.
“This device was sturdy enough to weather repeated use, and ownership notches suggest they were shared between male members of a tribe,” Torrens said. “We can imagine all the perverted Neanderthal fellows trying to covertly pass this thing around, idiotically grinning as if the women had no idea what was going on.”
The researchers speculate that females stopped getting pregnant as males became obsessed by what Torrens and her team have nicknamed the “Pocket Otter,” and in a couple of generations the subspecies went extinct. Even if the males had decided to go back to copulating with females, Torrens says, they may have found themselves too injured to do so.
“Neanderthal man exhibited tremendous arm strength, so we assume that many of them seriously injured their genitalia while maniacally using the Pocket Otter,” she said.
Some researchers are trying to cast doubt on the Pocket Otter theory of Neanderthal extinction, countering that Neanderthals didn’t die out at all but rather were subsumed into Homo sapiens, evidenced by what by geneticists say is Neanderthal DNA found in the DNA of modern humans. Torrens is not convinced.
“The Neanderthals were a robust lot with insatiable sexual appetites, and admittedly the men were as filthy-minded as they come,” she said. “But I don’t believe for a second that a well-hung, hulking Neanderthal male would get turned on by some scrawny Homo sapiens cavewoman with a tiny, oblong head and virtually no butt to speak of.”
This is the second time archaeologists have unearthed prehistoric adult items. in 1925, an archeology team in what is now the Czech Republic discovered a 29,000-year-old figurine called the Venus of Dolní Věstonice that experts say bears a striking resemblance to Kim Kardashian — and was probably passed around between male teenage hominids for the same purpose as Kardashian’s 2003 homemade sex video.
