Of the Nasomoni in Africa, Herodotus (iv. 172) reports:
“When a Nasomonian man takes his first wife, it is the custom that on the first night the bride should be visited by each of the guests in turn, and each one, as he leaves, gives her a present which he had brought with him to the house.”
Diodorus Siculus makes a similar report regarding the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands (v. 18). Have we not here an echo of primeval custom, of sexual promiscuity prior to marriage?
Very interesting are the accounts recently given by Melnikow regarding the free sexual relationships customary among the Siberian Buryats. There before marriage unregulated sexual intercourse between men and girls prevails. This is especially to be observed at festival seasons. Such festivals occur usually late in the evening, and can rightly be called “nights of love.” Near the villages bonfires are lighted, round which the men and women dance monotonous dances termed “nadan.” From time to time pairs separate from the thousands of dancers, and disappear into the darkness; soon they return and resume their place in the dance, to disappear again by and by into the obscurity; but they are not the same couples that disappear each time, for they continually change partners.[157]
Is this not promiscuity? In a mitigated form we can see the same among ourselves. A case recently came under my notice in which two friends made an exchange of their “intimates”; moreover, the “intimacy” in each case had been of very brief duration. This, indeed, happened in the full light of day; while among the Buryats the darkness concealed a completely indiscriminate promiscuity.
Marco Polo reports as a remarkable custom of the inhabitants of Thibet, that there a man would in no circumstances marry a girl who was a virgin, for they say a wife is worth nothing if she has not had intercourse with men. Girls were offered to the traveller, and he was expected to reward the courtesy with a ring or some other trifle, which the girl, when she wished to marry, would show as one of her “love-tokens.” The more such tokens she possessed, the more she was in request as a wife.[158]
From New Holland we receive similar reports.
Of especial importance, as proving the existence of sexual promiscuity, are the investigations of the student of folk-lore, Friedrich S. Krauss, regarding the sexual life of the Southern Slavs. Krauss has, indeed, rendered most valuable aids to the scientific study and anthropological foundation of the human sexual life; a place of honour among the founders of “anthropologia sexualis” must be given to Krauss, and also to Bastian, Post, Kohler, Mantegazza, and Ploss-Bartels.
Dr. Krauss first published his pioneer investigations in “Kryptadia,” vols. vi. and vii. (Paris, 1899 and 1901); but later he founded an annual for the record of researches into the folk-lore and ethnology of the sexual life, entitled “Anthropophyteia: Jahrbuch für folkloristische Erhebungen und Forschungen zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der geschlechtlichen Moral”—“Anthropophyteia: Annual for Folk-lorist Investigations and Researches in the History of the Evolution of Sexual Morality.” This has been published now for four years, 1904-1907, Krauss having the co-operation of anthropologists, ethnologists, folk-lorists, and medical men, such as Thomas Achelis, Iwan Bloch, Franz Boas, Albert Eulenburg, Anton Herrmann, Bernhard Obst, Giuseppe Pitré, Isak Robinsohn, and Karl von dem Steinen. It constitutes a most important addition to the hitherto very scanty works for the scientific study of sexual problems. Later, I shall have occasion to refer again to this important undertaking. Krauss, who, as he himself says, is insensitive to the romantic appeal of folk-lore, but has an open mind for the realities and possibilities of human history, has proved in this publication the unquestionable existence of sexual promiscuity among the Southern Slavs. As he himself declares, such an abundance of trustworthy proofs, obtained by a professional folk-lorist, regarding the existence of a form of sexual promiscuity within the narrow sphere of a single geographical province of research, has not hitherto been available.
It is, moreover, perfectly clear that the human need for sexual variety, which is an established anthropological phenomenon,[159] must in primitive times have been much stronger and more unbridled, in proportion as the whole of life had not hitherto risen above the needs of purely physical requirements. Since even in our own time, in a state of the most advanced civilization, after the development of a sexual morality penetrating and influencing our entire social life, this natural need for variety continues to manifest itself in almost undiminished strength, we can hardly regard it as necessary to prove that in primitive conditions sexual promiscuity was a more original, and, indeed, a more natural, state than marriage.