Oldest penises

W hen excavations began at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in the 18th century, the place turned out to be full of penises. The ancient art preserved under ash from the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius was so rich in willies that the English antiquarian Richard Payne Knight argued for the existence of an ancient fertility cult there. After all, there was one still alive in southern Italy at the time. His book An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus has an engraved frontispiece showing an array of contemporary wax phalluses made as votive offerings.

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Human penises vary in size on a number of measures, including length and circumference when flaccid and erect. Besides the natural variability of human penises in general, there are factors that lead to minor variations in a particular male, such as the level of arousal , time of day, room temperature, and frequency of sexual activity. Compared to other primates, including large examples such as the gorilla, the human penis is thickest, both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the body. Measurements vary, with studies that rely on self-measurement reporting a significantly higher average than those with a health professional measuring. As of [update] , a systematic review of 15, men, and the best research to date on the topic, as the subjects were measured by health professionals, rather than self-measured, has concluded that the average length of an erect human penis is

By Clodagh O'Brien. A perfectly preserved shellfish fossil over million years old has revealed a surprising feature — the oldest penis in the world. The fossil, a one millimetre-wide crustacean called an ostracod, was found in Brazil and examined by David Siveter at the University of Leicester. It was preserved with its shell open displayed another surprise — not one but two penises. Most ostracods are tiny marine creatures, but they have the largest sperm to body ratio in the natural world — up to ten times their body size.