During the 7th century, right around 610 A.D., while Europe struggled with the fall of the Roman Empire, Muhammad the goat herder adopted the practice of meditating alone for several weeks every year in a cave on Mount Hira near Mecca. Islamic tradition holds that during one of his visits to Mount Hira, being absent from advancing Arabic society, the Arabs invented the condom, using a goat’s lower intestine.

In 1873 the British somewhat refined the idea by taking the intestine out of the goat first.