If you were born in the 14th century BC (over 3,000 years ago) and wanted to find out if you were pregnant and know the gender of your baby, you would have had to still do a urine test… but one with a difference.
It is said that during the rule of Pharaoh Akhenaten (Queen Nefertiti’s husband), a woman’s urine was sprinkled on wheat and barley seeds in what was probably one of the first pregnancy and gender determining urine tests in history!
If the seeds sprouted, then the woman was said to be pregnant. If the wheat sprouted, she was going to have a girl and if the barley sprouted, a boy was on the way.
Reportedly, this technique worked at least to determine if the woman was pregnant, with the pregnancy hormones in the urine probably encouraging the seeds to sprout.