Birth Control

While latex condoms and birth control pills are a modern form of contraceptives, humans have been practicing birth control for a long time. Greeks used Silphium, a plant which was known to have contraceptive and abortifacient properties. The demand for the plant was so great that by the third or fourth centuries, Silphium went extinct. The Egyptian Ebers Papyrus from 1550 BC and the Kahun Papyrus from 1850 BC have within them some of the earliest documented descriptions of birth control: the use of honey, acacia leaves and lint to be placed in the vagina to block sperm.