I am reading a book, an autobiography of an American hobo in the thirties, and she talks often of her lovers, having been raised by free love anarchists. She does not give the more visceral details of her escapades, but I can't help but wonder - what was the etiquette then, presumably before the widespread use of condoms? Did men simply come in a woman and eventually she got pregnant? Did they pull out? And what of very far back, say, five hundred years ago? Or even before the dawn of civilization? I am fascinated.
In the ancient Mediterranean, people used a plant in the parsley family called silphium as a contraceptive/abortifacient (and for seasoning food). Silphium only grew wild, and it was so important to the economy of the Greek North African colony of Cyrene that they put a picture of it on their coins. It was actually so popular that it was driven to extinction in ancient times. According to Pliny, the last stalk ever found was ["sent as a curiosity to the Emperor Nero."] (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+19.15&redirect=true) Silphium was probably used as an ingredient in a pessary inserted into the vagina to bring on menstruation.