Who do we have to thank for the dildo?!

Who do we have to thank for the dildo?

The phallic sex toy probably qualifies more as a discovery than an invention. After all, the vagina is made to accommodate not merely a penis, but anything of that general character. Smooth sticks, bones and various vegetation no doubt presented themselves early on to the creative human mind.
Spotting the first human-made, specifically engineered dildo is no easy task. History has largely shunned chronicling sexual behavior. Modern retrospective history tends to be biased, as we all are in sexual matters: Unmistakable images in art have often been downplayed by mainstream historians while lesbian scholars have tended to grab at any dildo-shaped straw. It can be very difficult to tell the difference between phallic symbolism—which was rampant in the ancient world—and actual, practical dildo use.
There is also the matter of ill-understood defloweration ceremonies performed on young girls in the ancient East. Whether the implements used in such cases are, per se, dildos is a matter of interpretation.
(The origin of the world “dildo,” incidentally, is unknown, and of fairly recent, 17th-century vintage.)
The earliest dildo descriptions we can identify with certainty come from ancient Greece, as early as about 400 B.C. Their imagery adorns large numbers of surviving pottery and other artworks, and their use is confirmed in surviving literature from the period.
The Greeks called their dildos olisbos. They appear to have been made of either smooth wood or very soft leather. There are some descriptions of olisbos with straps attached, possibly for fixing the dildo to a solid object for convenience, or perhaps also for wearing and using with a partner. (Straps are a common add-on for modern dildos; the same idea we know to have been hit upon in medieval Asia.)
The Greek descriptions make it clear that dildos were very popular among lesbians. There is more discretion regarding their use among straight women, but they appear to have been quite mainstream there as well, if art is any suggestion.
I could find no ancient references to anal dildo use among either women or men. Absence of evidence is surely not evidence of absence in this case, but commercially designed, specialty anal dildos seem to be a fairly modern invention.