ABSTRACT
Although Europeans had become familiar with homosexual behavior in other cultures through medieval contact with Islam and Renaissance conquests in Asia and the Americas, an attempt to present some image of the world-wide dif fusion of "strange sexual practices" began only in the 19th century with such globetrotters as Sir Richard Bur ton, Paolo Mantegazza, and "Jacobus X." The approach has lingered in pulp publications-some of them approx imating adult-bookstore fare. Beginning with the large armchair synthesis of the German scholar Karsch-Haack (1333), professional anthropologists attempted more factual balance sheets. Despite the recording of substan tial quantities of information, the still-tentative char acter of these summations demonstrates that more ethnol ogies (and more accurate and revealing ones) are needed from many parts of the world before we can attempt a great map, so to speak, of world homosexuality that will accur ately mirror both the genuine typological affinities and the profound differences in cultural form that define homosexual behavior in various societies.
