Some may dismiss the outer reaches of academic inquiry as a load of bollocks, but connoisseurs of improbable research will appreciate the sheer scholarly precision that informs seminal papers such as "Right-left and the scrotum in Greek sculpture".
Chris McManus' investigation of scrotal asymmetry remains the definitive work on this topic. Originally published in 1979, it "languished unread" until the award of an Ig Nobel prize for biology in 2002 provoked considerable worldwide interest and led to its republication. As Dr McManus, of University College London's psychology department, notes with pardonable pride, though it is dated in some sense, it "still has merit as being probably the most detailed account of the topic which is available".
The detail is impressive. In most men the right testicle is higher (62.1% or 65.1% according to which survey one cites) and larger than the left, but few are aware that the average weights are 9.95g and 9.36g respectively and 9.69 and 9.10ccs in volume.
Dr McManus' interest, however, is really in why the ancient Greek sculptors, so meticulous and observant when is came to depicting the human body, so often got it wrong when it came to the male organ. From observations of 187 sculptures, he notes that in the largest single group the right testicle is placed higher (correct), but the left is larger (wrong) and the second most frequent group depicts the left as higher and the right larger. Why?
Seeking answers for this question leads Dr McManus into the symbolic importance of right and left found in many cultures and the beliefs of the ancient Greeks about how the sex of babies was determined. There were competing theories, and Pythagoras and Aristotle also had things to say on the subject.
Empedocles believed the sex of the child was determined by the heat of the womb, whereas Anaxogoras proposed that male seed came from the right testis and female from the left. This idea certainly had legs. Long after it was influencing how Greek sculptors saw the male body, men were being given extremely uncomfortable-sounding advice on conception. "As late as 1891, Mrs Ida Ellis in her Essentials of Conception (see Pearsall, 1971 p.303) stated: 'It is the male who can progenate a male or a female child at will, by putting an elastic band round the testicle not required'." It brings tears to the eyes just to think about it.