Letting Go of Preconceived Notions...

First homosexual caveman found - The Telegraph

The oldest gay in the village: 5,000-year-old is 'outed' by the way he was buried - Mail Online

Has the first gay caveman been unearthed? - The Globe and Mail


Really? I mean... really??

I had three reactions when I first heard about this in class: 1) is this serious? 2) where's the evidence? and 3) where does sexual orientation come into this? It wasn't until later that these wild claims were 'toned down' in:

'Gay Caveman' Story Overblown, Archaeologists Say - Live Science

and

Gay caveman probably not gay or a caveman - National Post

The implications of these labels are ridiculous, but I have to hand it to the media, at the very least it seems to have generated a public interest in archaeological discovery - which is often difficult to accomplish. However, I believe interest can be generated in more appropriate ways, and be more accurate as to the facts.

The discovery was of a male skeleton buried in a traditionally female position (on his left side with his head facing west (the Globe and Mail appears to have made a mistake and says East... )). The grave goods were not gender-specific, although there appears to be differing reports of different grave goods in each article...

This issue, for me, brings up the importance of differentiating between sex, gender, and sexual orientation. Sex is biologically determined, gender is a cultural construct, and sexual orientation is the individual practice of sexuality. To understand the grave of this coined 'gay caveman' we have to realize that first of all, determining the sex of a skeleton is by no means exact and open to subjective interpretation. Gender is dictated by culture, and thus, portrayed differently across cultures - what we understand to be culturally male and culturally female is by no means the same as what was thought in 2,500 BC and we should not use our own preconceived notions to determine the gender of ancient remains. Finally, sexual orientation is personal to the individual and may or may not be openly expressed or accepted in the individual's culture, let alone revealed in the archaeological record.

In conclusion, I believe its important to separate ourselves from our ideas of gender. The 'gay caveman' is not a caveman, and there is no direct evidence to conclusively state that he was gay. There are many other explanations to account for the irregularities of this particular burial including: he was of a 3rd gender, those that buried him had different reasons for altering the way he was buried, or maybe the initial interpretation of the skeleton as male was incorrect. I hope that one day we can disassociate from our own cultural understanding of sex, gender, and sexual orientation and view ancient burials in their own cultural context.