The history of zoophilia and bestiality begins in the prehistoric era, where depictions of humans and non-human animals in a sexual context appear infrequently in rock art. Bestiality remained a theme in mythology and folklore through the classical period and into the Middle Ages (e.g. the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan) and several ancient authors purported to document it as a regular, accepted practice—albeit usually in "other" cultures. Explicit legal prohibition of human sexual contact with other animals is a legacy of the Abrahamic religions: the Hebrew Bible imposes the death penalty on both the person and animal involved in an act of bestiality. There are several examples known from medieval Europe of people and animals executed for committing bestiality. With the Age of Enlightenment, bestiality was subsumed with other sexual "crimes against nature" into civil sodomy laws, usually remaining a capital crime. Bestiality remains illegal in most countries. Arguments used to justify this include: it is against religion, it is a "crime against nature," and that non-human animals cannot give consent and that sex with animals is inherently abusive. In common with many paraphilias, the internet has provided a connective platform for the zoophile community, which has lobbied for the recognition of zoophilia (or zoosexuality as an alternative sexuality), and advocated for the legalisation of bestiality.
Prehistory Depictions of human sexual activity with animals appear infrequently in prehistoric art. Possibly the oldest depiction, and the only known example from the Palaeolithic (prior to the Neolithic Revolution and the domestication of animals), is found in the Vale do Côa in Portugal. It shows a man with an exaggerated, erect penis juxtaposed with a goat. However, there is some doubt that the two figures are contemporary; while the goat is depicted in characteristic palaeolithic style, the scene may have been altered in a later period with the insertion of the human figure. From the Neolithic onwards, images of zoophilia are slightly more common. Examples are found at Coren del Valento, a cave in Val Camonica, Italy, containing rock art dating from 10,000 BCE to as late as the Middle Ages, one depicting a man penetrating a horse, and Sagaholm, a Bronze Age cairn in Sweden where several petroglyphs have been found with similar scenes. Zoophilia has also been recorded in rock art in the Brazilian state of Piauí.
Classical antiquity
Several Greek myths include the God Zeus seducing or abducting favoured mortals while in the form of an animal: Europa and the bull, Ganymede and the eagle, and Leda and the Swan. Only the latter legend includes actual copulation between Leda and Zeus in his animal form, but depictions of this act, fairly uncommon in antiquity, became a popular motif in classicising Renaissance art, contributing to a lasting prominence in Western culture. Another Greek myth tells of Pasiphaë who commissioned to build a wooden cow, a device that would enable her to have sex with a bull.
Various classical writers recorded that bestiality was common in other cultures. Herodotus was followed by Pindar, Strabo and Plutarch in alleging that Egyptian women engaged in sexual relations with goats for religious and magical purposes – the animal aspects of Egyptian deities being particularly alien to the Greco-Roman world. Conversely, Plutarch and Virgil make similar accusations of the Greeks. The Golden Ass, the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety, describes a sexual encounter of a donkey and a willing woman; according to the story, another encounter was planned as an act of a public punishment for a female criminal. Despite their place in mythology and literature, actual acts of bestiality were probably as uncommon in antiquity as they are today. Roman civil law, however, made no mention of it. The explicit prohibition of and strict penalties for zoophilia universal in later European legal systems were derived from Jewish and Christian tradition. The Hebrew Bible imposes the death penalty on both the human and animal parties involved in an act of bestiality: "if a man has sexual relations with an animal, he shall be put to death; and you shall kill the animal." The Synod of Ancyra in 313–316 discussed the position of the church with regard to bestiality at length and two of the resulting twenty-five canons addressed it: the sixteenth canon described the penance and level of restrictions to be applied to various age groups for committing bestiality; the seventeenth canon prohibited all lepers from praying inside church if they had committed bestiality while they suffered from leprosy. Hittite law mandated the death penalty for intercourse with animals, excluding horses and mules (violators were instead barred from the priesthood and from approaching the king).
Europe: Middle Ages In the Church-oriented culture of the Middle Ages, zoophilic activity was met with execution, typically burning, and death to the animals involved either the same way or by hanging. Sects deemed heretical by the Church such as the Hussites were accused of bestiality. Masters comments that:
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