Random Fact: Pregnancy Tests Have Been Around for Centuries

Today’s random fact is all about how women would determine if they’d have an extra mouth to feed.

SO, did you know that pregnancy tests have been around waaaaay longer than the ’60s? While it didn’t require plastic sticks, women in Egypt around 1350 B.C.E. were still wizzing on things to find out if they were pregnant.

From LiveScience.com:

The papyrus document suggests a woman urinate on wheat and barley seeds. If the wheat sprouted, a female child was on its way, the ancients decreed, and if the barley sprouted, a male child would soon arrive. No sprouts meant no child was expected.

Strangely, researchers in the 1960s tested this method and found it had a grain of truth, according to the National Institutes of Health. Higher-than-normal levels of estrogen in pregnant women’s urine, scientists speculated, may stimulate the germination of seeds (but were useless at predicting the sex of the child).

Check out more info HERE!