this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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This is real and the Egyptians did use the wheat and barley method for pregnancy testing. Surprisingly it's not complete hokum because it did work for detecting pregnancy 70-85% of the time if not the specific gender
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/pee-pregnant-history-science-urine-based-pregnancy-tests/
It definitely did not tell anyone the gender. It's been tested and it can, as you said, detect pregnancy more than random chance but not perfectly. It cannot predict the gender.
I was really into ancient Egypt as a kid and read about this growing up. The level of medical knowledge they seemed to have (or at least their willingness to wing it) is very interesting!
When it comes to people figuring out things by chance it's basically the monkeys writing Shakespeare gag, get enough of us in the same place just trying shit out eventually we get something right