This is amazing. You might not believe it but modern day science has verified its accuracy.

I’m constantly learning more about how much the ancient Egyptians knew when it came to science and technology. One thing is for sure, they were brilliant in many ways. Somehow thousands of years ago they cleverly discovered the key to home pregnancy tests using completely natural methods.

Sadly, scientists of the 1900’s invented some disgusting methods to detect pregnancy. If only they kept it simple like the Egyptians our modern day pregnancy kits may have been developed by more natural methods.

The ingenious yet simple Egyptian method was proven in the 1960’s to have 70% accuracy. According to one papyrus text from around 1400 B.C.E., in order for a woman to determine whether she was pregnant or not, all she had to do was urinate in two different bags – one bag filled with barley, another bag with wheat. The woman would then urinate on the seeds, cover it and check back over the next few days.

If the seeds sprouted there was a very good chance she was pregnant and if they didn’t, she most likely wasn’t. They claimed that they could determine the gender of the baby by observing whether more wheat or barely had sprouted however the gender aspect was said to be proven false in the 1960’s.

Modern pregnancy tests rely on proteins that can detect a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) which is secreted when a female is pregnant, but scientists speculate that this ancient test worked so well because elevated levels of estrogen in a woman’s urine (if she is pregnant) could promote seed growth.

Whether or not the Egyptians understood that the sprouting was a result of hormonal differences is unknown, but they were surely onto something that most would think is far beyond their time.

Comments