I have something to confess: I was overly ambitious in thinking I could cover the history of menstrual hygiene in just one post. I’ve had a blast doing the research on this topic and have some juicy tidbits I want to share with you (hmmm juicy tidbits just doesn’t sound quite right within the context of menstrual history, does it?).

So this will be a four-part weekly series. The first part will discuss how women from prehistory through Ancient Egypt handled menstrual hygiene. Here we go!

The vagina: portal of life, tunnel of love, channel of feminine power. The fleshy, cave-like canal from the womb has been a source of fear, awe, disgust, lust, and fascination for centuries. And for centuries, humanity has sought to tame it, to cover it, to disguise it, to clean it up, and to plug it.

If you consider the time and money invested toward menstrual hygiene, you’d think it’s one of the great problems we must confront as humanity. More man-(and woman-) hours have been devoted to inventing the perfect feminine hygiene product than to developing sustainable energy sources. More marketing dollars are invested in selling tampons (which is a $2.85 billion market) than in increasing awareness about women’s health issues.

So: just what have we come up with as a species to battle the pervasive (and staining) nature of menstrual blood and other feminine fluids? Here’s how our foremothers have handled their monthlies over the flow of time. (PS, if period puns give you the cramps, you’ll want to close this page now).