The History of Pornography: From The Paleolithic to Pornhub
From Beginning to End, the History of Erotic Entertainment
Update: since the writing of this article, much more evidence has come out and porn is not addictive, especially not in the sense that drugs and alcohol are. Follow the amazing work of Dr. Nicole Prause of UCLA for more. Here’s her Twitter.
I had Dr. Prause on my podcast on The Science of Sex. You can watch my interview with her here.
Pornography is defined as the depiction of titillating and sexually-charged imagery which is used in different mediums such as photographs, literature, film, statues, and so forth to evoke emotion and sexual desire on the behalf of the consumer. The concept of pornography itself is an extremely subjective notion. What one person or culture regards as sexualized or erotic, other people or cultures may see something much more innocent. In a way, everything that’s sexual but isn’t sex is porn, and even sex itself is also porn.
Not all sex is porn, but all porn is sex…
Throughout different historical periods, pornography has manifested in many different forms for many different people and has been expressed through radically different mediums.
