The Appendix

Sex and procreation can be found throughout recorded human history, regardless of locale. In mythology (from Zeus boning anything that moved to "be fruitful and multiply" to the Immaculate Conception and numerous creation myths besides), religious teachings regarding sex being for procreation and not mere pleasure, laws governing property rights, inheritance and royal succession, in literature, in plays and songs, in fairy tales and old wives' tales, etc.

For example, here's an article on Samuel Pepys and a sexual manual from 1680 which quite clearly demonstrates that the nature of carnal knowledge was generally known at the time[0]. Along with death and mortal fear, sex and birth comprises one of the archetypal constants of the human experience. It's everywhere. It also happens to be knowledge that's necessary to continue the species, which humans have proven quite good at.

I guarantee that our parents knew how babby was formed, as did their parents, as did their parents, etc. Even our hominid ancestors before the formation of language understood it, because even animals understand it at an instinctive level.

[0]http://theappendix.net/posts/2013/06/this-misterie-of-fucking-a-sex-manual-from-1680

I scanned it and transcribed it and shared it online a few years ago, but not sure if that is still around, and I'd have to dig through boxes in the loft to find the original, however, the letter this article [1] describes sounds almost identical in content to the one I have.

It reminded me that I also have a "letter from the prison chaplain", and a short follow-up letter from "Antonia Garcia" in shaky writing that trails off mid-sentence, and another letter from the "chaplain" saying he had passed, enclosing a supposed prison death certificate.

[1] http://theappendix.net/issues/2013/10/proto-spam-spanish-prisoners-and-confidence-games

EDIT: I found the transcript and have put a copy online here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dsb_Ss9dIRa8NvoAZ0W2FLi0cxcH_2bL127DNcYOmOM/edit?usp=sharing

Onfim is just wonderful, thank you for that! (I love the one of an adult horseman labelled "Onfim.")

At some point I should make a collection of all the kid's scribbles I've seen in archives. I remember one in the Huntington Library that was a contemporary copy of John Donne poems, written in beautiful script, but interspersed with a 4-year-olds scribbles of faces and animals via quill pen. It was hilarious.

I also love Darwin's kids drawings on the back of his "Origin of Species" manuscript: http://theappendix.net/posts/2014/02/darwins-children-drew-vegetable-battles-on-the-origin-of-species