History
Circumcision is (arguably) the world's oldest planned surgical procedure, hypothesized to be over 15,000 years old, well pre-dating recorded history. There is no firm consensus as to how it came to be practiced worldwide. One theory is that it began in one geographic area and spread from there; another is that several different cultural groups began its practice independently. Peter Charles Remondino suggested that it began as a diminishment of full castration of a captured enemy: castration certainly would have been fatal, while some form of circumcision would permanently mark the defeated, yet leave him alive to serve as a slave.
In the study of the history of circumcision, there are two main "streams" that are followed. One stream is located in the lands south and east of the Mediterranean, and starts with Sudan and Ethiopia, extends through the ancient Egyptians into the Semites, Jews and Muslims, and is picked up by the Bantu Africans. The other stream flows through the Australian Aborigines and Polynesians. There is also evidence that circumcision was practiced in the Americas, but little detail is available about its history.
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