New pornographic figurines from the Stone Age have been discovered in Germany. But researchers can’t agree on what the 7,000-year-old sculptures mean. Were our ancestors uninhibited s.e.x fiends, or was reproduction strictly controlled to improve mobility? An increasing number of finds seem to indicate the Stone Age was an orgy of s.e.xual imagination.

According to Staeuble, the fragments show that the man was standing with his pelvis at a slight angle. The woman in front of him was bent forward, almost at a 90-degree angle. Another indication that the two figures belong together is the fact that they are both made to the same scale — both figures were originally just under 30 centimeters (11.7 inches) tall.

A fresco from the public bath in Pompeii. When did humans first start making pornographic art?

Scientists can’t agree: Was the Stone Age a period of wild s.e.x orgies or were they more reserved in their s.e.xuality?

But there has been some progress in the study of s.e.xuality among early mankind. An archeological dig on the banks of Lake Constance has produced something just as spectacular as the erotic clay figures from Saxony. Researchers discovered a temple whose walls were once adorned with protruding clay breasts. The “cult temple,” uncovered by archeologists from the southern German city of Ludwigshafen, is almost 6,000 years old.

The traveling exhibition titled “100,000 Years of S.e.x,” which is currently making its way through Germany, also attempts to shed new light on our more distant ancestors. Some of the items on display include s.e.xy underwear from the Bronze Age, ribald frescoes from Athens and cloth condoms that were dipped in milk.

But how should researchers interpret these recent finds? The discoveries have reopened an old rift in the academic world, in which two camps are at odds over a fundamental issue. The question they’re quarreling over is this: Did our ancestors live relaxed and uninhibited lives, or was asceticism the order of the day in the primeval age?

The two sides of the debate are clearly defined: Socio-biologists believe that the early hominids were basically promiscuous, and that they spent their lives running around the fields and woods of their day, constantly in pursuit of s.e.x, following the genetic dictates of their rampant hormones. The other side of the equation are those — sometimes referred to as “tabooists” — who assume that even early man lived under a strict system of s.e.xual abstinence, and that the s.e.x lives of Neanderthal man were everything but orgiastic.