The problems of textual provenance begin at the first sentence, which describes a 12,000-year-old painting in the Grotte des Combarelles in the Dordogne showing “a man and a woman having sex – with his penis covered”. Perhaps indeed “archaeologists and historians have debated (whether the couple) were actually practicing safe sex”, but the debate has yet to emerge anywhere that I can find on the internet. The Rough Guide doesn’t usually miss a trick, but neither it nor any other travel guide mentions this remarkable painting, and there is no photo in the present book.
So says Chris McManus’s review, in the Times Higher Education Supplement, of the book “The Humble Little Condom: A History,” Aine Collier, Prometheus Books, 371 pages, ISBN 9781591025566.