Gay Caveman?! Rude. Third-gendered-prehistoric-farmer...... maybe.

Time and time again I am frustrated by lofty claims made by social anthropologists. I understand "shock factor". It's key in getting anything shared in today's fast-paced, insanely self-involved culture. I get that the terms "caveman" and "gay" are words that still trigger curiosity in the general public (thanks to GEICO ads and homophobia), but I am also empathetic to people that can no longer stand up for themselves when potentially untrue things are said about them. If I was the "gay caveman" - actually let's call this individual Sam, a good ol' all-gender/species encompassing name - I'd probably want to box whoever's ears was telling the general public things about me when they've never even met me.

How you get this:

That is SOME 'come hither' look, right there.

from this:

Ahmahgawd! Weird - must be gay.

I just don't understand. There are so many things wrong with this.

I have to say, though, this information wouldn't have spanned quite the audience that it did, if not for the title this guy was given. Sorry, Sam, looks like you're the scapegoat for the media's inherent disregard for political correctness.

Sensationalism at its finest.

If you were wondering where this pseudo-rant came from..

We were instructed to google "gay caveman" and respond to the search results. The background on this Sam person is as follows. A bunch of anatomically correct bones were dug up in Prague. Male bones. But they were buried in such a fashion as to represent the typical burial methods of a female. The bones were dated to between 2900 and 2500 BC during a time where funerary practices were taken fairly seriously; Sam's burial was no accident. Sam was positioned on his left side with his head facing west, rather than the more manly position of facing the east on his right side. Sam was also buried alongside pots and jugs, and no weapons. 

The results of this dig were introduced during a press release and were immediately overtaken by interpretation via the media. I find it insanely ironic that the majority of the media articles on the topic are debunking themselves. The majority of the titles brought up on my Google search claim that some other media conglomerate has OH EM GEE, COMPLETELY RUINED ARCHEOLOGICAL SCIENCE FOR EVERYONE. Give me a break, you are all a part of it. And can you imagine the dismay that the archaeologists responsible for the find felt? Their initial, careful interpretations were completely blown out of proportion and their entire find was given an air of sideshow entertainment. All they wanted people to know was that they found a 5000 year old skeleton that was buried in a way that was normally reserved for women. This burial could have represented any multitude of gender roles, or not even. Basically, in our current terms perhaps he was just really bad at gym class and majorly kick-ass at home ec.

He could have even been a witch doctor, or a shaman. SO THERE.

Edit: In another class (Bioarchaeology: Methods and Theory) we have discussed in depth and even practiced the sexing of skeletal remains. There are an insane amount of confounding factors on the proper analysis of sex of a skeleton (taphonomy, disease, genetic descent, body modification..) - the proper identification of biological sex of a skeleton is not entirely perfect in itself. Prior to this understanding, I didn't even stop to question the science behind the initial sexing of Sam as a male. Females are consistently underrepresented in the skeletal record due to intermediate or ambiguous sexing (where they appear in the middle of the continuum between male and female). Though I believe in the power of science, there is still a chance that Sam could be a biological female; it all comes down to the interpretation.

Other things I've learned doing this exercise:

- there is a scale that dictates the degree to which a person is homo or heterosexual (between 1 and 7) - the Kinsey scale
HUH? Was unaware that homosexuality was a continuum.