25. Fascinating Bronze Age Pregnancy Tests
Back in the Bronze Age, long before modern medicine or even the concept of medicine as a professional discipline came into being, people did not have a firm grasp on why some women got pregnant and others did not. They also had no way to predict pregnancy or to tell the gender of a fetus in a woman’s womb. That did not stop some ancient healers – whether they were charlatans or whether they simply acted on sincerely held but mistaken beliefs – from taking a stab at it.
Some of those attempts even worked. One of the earliest written records of pregnancy is found in an Ancient Egyptian papyrus that dates to around 1350 BC. It called for a woman who might be pregnant to pee on wheat and barley seeds over the course of several days. According to that test: “If the barley grows, it means a male child. If the wheat grows, it means a female child. If both do not grow, she will not bear at all“.
