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First “homosexual caveman” found
Kathlene M. writes:
I thought this article was a satire, straight from The Onion. But no, it’s not a joke.
Headline of the article:
First homosexual caveman found
Archaeologists have unearthed the 5,000-year-old remains of what they believe may have been the world’s oldest known gay caveman.
LA replies:
What—did they find a cave painting of a stone-age musical comedy?
Seriously, below is the article from The Telegraph, and below it are thoughts on different and more likely ways that the same facts could be explained.
First homosexual caveman found
Archaeologists have unearthed the 5,000-year-old remains of what they believe may have been the world’s oldest known gay caveman.
10:00PM BST 06 Apr 2011
The male body—said to date back to between 2900-2500BC—was discovered buried in a way normally reserved only for women of the Corded Ware culture in the Copper Age.
The skeleton was found in a Prague suburb in the Czech Republic with its head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic jugs, rituals only previously seen in female graves.
“From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake,” said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova.
“Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual,” she added.
According to Corded Ware culture which began in the late Stone Age and culminated in the Bronze Age, men were traditionally buried lying on their right side with their heads pointing towards the west, and women on their left sides with their heads pointing towards the east. Both sexes would be put into a crouching position.
The men would be buried alongside weapons, hammers and flint knives as well as several portions of food and drink to accompany them to the other side.
Women would be buried with necklaces made from teeth, pets, and copper earrings, as well as jugs and an egg-shaped pot placed near the feet.
“What we see here doesn’t add up to traditional Corded Ware cultural norms. The grave in Terronska Street in Prague 6 is interred on its left side with the head facing the West. An oval, egg-shaped container usually associated with female burials was also found at the feet of the skeleton. None of the objects that usually accompany male burials such as weapons, stone battle axes and flint knives were found in the grave.
“We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a ‘transsexual’ or ‘third gender grave’ in the Czech Republic,” archaeologist Katerina Semradova told a press conference on Tuesday.
She said that archeologists had uncovered an earlier case dating from the Mesolithic period where a female warrior was buried as a man.
She added that Siberian shamans, or latter-day witch doctors, were also buried in this way but with richer funeral accessories to appropriate to their elevated position in society.
“But this later discovery was neither of those, leading us to believe the man was probably homosexual or transsexual,” Semeradova said.
The Corded Ware culture takes its name from the frequent use of decorative cord impressions found its pots and covered much of North, Central and Eastern Europe.
It is also known as a single-grave and battleaxe culture due to separate burials and the Mena s habit of being buried with stone axes.
[end of article]
LA replies:
The archeological findings are interesting, but one can think of other and more likely explanations for them that have nothing to do with homosexuality, especially homosexuality in our contemporary sense of the word. For example, perhaps the individual combined male and female physical traits. Such genetically abnormal individuals exist in our time, and probably would have existed 5,000 years ago as well. Another possibility is that the individual was a kind of priest or shaman, who in some manner transcended the usual sex distinctions, in the same way that, in Greek mythology, Tiresias is thought to have done, as brought into modern life in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”:
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit …
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
Thus the seer Tiresias, transplanted into the modern city, becomes a kind of sexless being looking sadly at modern sexual disorder.
Another figure from literature who transcends ordinary sexuality is Julius Caesar in Bernard Shaw’s brilliant treatment of him in Caesar and Cleopatra:
Then silence again. Then a man comes from the south with stealing steps, ravished by the mystery of the night, all wonder, and halts, lost in contemplation, opposite the left flank of the Sphinx, whose bosom, with its burden, is hidden from him by its massive shoulder.)
THE MAN:
Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day’s deed, and think my night’s thought. In the little world yonder, Sphinx, my place is as high as yours in this great desert; only I wander, and you sit still; I conquer, and you endure; I work and wonder, you watch and wait; I look up and am dazzled, look down and am darkened, look round and am puzzled, whilst your eyes never turn from looking out—out of the world—to the lost region—the home from which we have strayed. Sphinx, you and I, strangers to the race of men, are no strangers to one another: have I not been conscious of you and of this place since I was born? Rome is a madman’s dream: this is my Reality. These starry lamps of yours I have seen from afar in Gaul, in Britain, in Spain, in Thessaly, signalling great secrets to some eternal sentinel below, whose post I never could find. And here at last is their sentinel—an image of the constant and immortal part of my life, silent, full of thoughts, alone in the silver desert. Sphinx, Sphinx:… My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God—nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx?
Now did Shaw intend to say that Caesar was homosexual? It wouldn’t seem likely. Rather, his Caesar is a universal genius who, like the Sphinx itself, transcends ordinary human categories and expresses a cosmic reality.
These then are some of the ways in we can imagine an ancient culture treating a man as though he were a woman and burying him in the manner normally reserved for women. He might have been a genetically abnormal person. He might have been a shaman or prophet who transcended normal sex roles. Or he might have been a man who performed certain female functions in his society. But the kneejerk need of liberals to make the whole universe and all of history conform to our current liberal ideology automatically eliminates such possibilities, and results in his designation as a “homosexual caveman.”
- end of initial entry -
Dawn B. writes: Shouldn’t that be “first LBGT caveperson found” to be scientifically accurate?
Dawn B. writes:
An alternate explanation for:
“The skeleton was found in a Prague suburb in the Czech Republic with its head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic jugs, rituals only previously seen in female graves.”
Surrounded by jugs … perhaps he was a vintner or cook. How many people in today’s society who deal with food or drink are male? Why this rush to find a “homosexual”—is it to prove that homosexuality is a historically traditional sexual orientation?
LA replies:
Yes.
Kathlene M. writes:
Your comments reflect what others have said elsewhere. Shamanism was mentioned as a possible burial explanation. Others mentioned that the caveman could have been buried by enemy captors in a way to shame him. There are several ways to interpret this that go beyond current liberal ideology, as you’ve mentioned.
Next thing you know “scientists” will discover that this “homosexual” caveman was married to another “homosexual” caveman, based on the proximity of his grave to a phallic monument or something. Then that will be proof positive that gay “marriage” existed from the origins of mankind, and that cavemen were more tolerant than modern-day “bigots.” Sheesh.
Bruce B. writes:
Another possibility would be that he was a eunuch. He could have become one through an unfortunate accident or he could have been intentionally castrated.
What I hate is how the first line is so definite (“First homosexual caveman found”) but then they write “believe may have been” in the next sentence. Not only liberal journalism but sensationalistic journalism.
Thomas Bertonneau writes:
I just came upon this article at the National Inquisitor:
An aging Barney Rubble, former co-star of the 1960s TV sitcom The Flintstones, has told the National Inquisitor that the long-running TV show’s headliner, Frederick “Fred” Flintstone, was a sexually ambiguous cross-dressing “bachelor” in private life whose marriage to Wilma Flintstone was arranged by Hannah-Barbera studios to cover up the likelihood that Flintstone was gay. Rubble, who has recently celebrated his eighty-sixth birthday but is still mentally sharp, is currently living in the South Hollywood Charity Home for Elderly and Indigent Actors. His own on-screen marriage to Betty Rubble was real, the octogenarian told the Inquisitor, and the couple’s child Bam-Bam was actually their own. “Betty and I met on the set and married. When she got pregnant, the show was such a big hit, the writers worked the new circumstance into the script.”
Rubble, the last surviving Flintstones cast member, said, “In those days, it would have been impossible to keep Fred on the show if knowledge of his off-camera life had become known. And it would have been impossible to keep the show going without Fred. The studio made some big, secret concession to Wilma to marry Fred in a big public ceremony, which she did.” When the show was cancelled in 1966, Wilma had the marriage annulled. She married again and raised three children, but she kept Fred’s secret to the end. After the cancellation, all of the cast members found that they had been typecast and none would work in television again.
According to Patricia “Pat” Brushcut, Professor of Gender and Animation Studies at California State Academy of Video Arts, Van Nuys, Rubble’s comments shed light on the oppressive conditions under which GLBT actors worked in the pre-Stonewall days. “Rock Hudson and Raymond Burr also entered into fake marriages to hide the fact of their gayness,” Brushcut said. Brushcut also remarks that, according to her semiotic de-coding of The Flintstones, writers sympathetic to the shows star worked dissident messages into the scripts, such as the show’s strange motto, “Yabadabadoo.” “I think we all know what that means,” Brushcut said.
Dawn B. writes:
Also, the fact that he was facing east in the burial ground, could be that he joined the tribe from an eastern location and often expressed the desire to return “home” there. Many people join a group from another region but in their later years express a desire to “return home.”
Thomas Bertonneau writes:
By the way, I think the final line of the Flintstones theme song is, “We’ll have a gay old time”!
Daniel R. writes:
Perhaps the “caveman” in question suffered from Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, also formerly known as Testicular Feminization Syndrome. Such persons, though genetically male, are nearly indistinguishable from ordinary women without a gynecological examination. However, CAIS women are taller and have larger hands and narrower hips than the average ordinary woman because (as I understand) they basically have male skeletons. And all the archaeologists found was a skeleton.
Cavemen would likely not have understood the difference between a CAIS woman and any other infertile woman. After all, we generally assume that CAIS women are ordinary women until they get to be about 16, at which point the fact that they have never menstruated becomes a cause for concern. The tribe gave the person in question a woman’s burial because that’s what you do with women.
Semradova’s assertion that this is an example of a “Third gender grave” is ridiculous. Cultures which have a third gender role distinguish it from the other two genders. That’s what makes it a third gender role. She mentions shamans being buried like women, but with special shaman accessories. This is consistent with other third-sex-role positions in other cultures. For example, American Indian “Two-Spirits” are associated with transsexualism, cross-dressing, and religion. East Indian Hijra are a separate caste with special religious position and duties. There is a tradition of sacred transsexualism in Indonesia (although oddly it exists alongside a tradition of ordinary, profane transsexualism).
As this is a male skeleton buried unambiguously as a woman, Semradova would have to say that this tribe (Corded Ware) is one in which male-to-female transsexualism is uncritically accepted; a man who attempts to transition into a female role is treated as a female without fuss. Not only is this inconsistent with the practices of other primitive cultures, in which if transsexuality is accepted at all it is sacred, but is in Semradova’s own opinion inconsistent with Corded Ware culture. Surely this is not her finest hour.
Irv P. writes:
I always suspected that Fred Flintstone was gay. I’m glad to hear that my suspicions were correct!
Can you imagine how much that poor man suffered? Maybe his life and death weren’t in vain. Homosexual marriage will right all those terrible wrongs.
April 8
Robert B. in Minnesota writes:
Considering that 5,000 years ago there were much more advanced peoples in Europe than these (see 8,000 year old cities) and that these people had already entered the Bronze Age, these people were most likely being run out of their territories and this man could have just been a hasty burial by people who were no longer able or capable of providing a traditional burial.
I can’t find the city being unearthed in central Europe just now, but here’s another example thats even older than that.
Randy B. writes:
My first thoughts were the same as yours, Lawrence, how were they able tell? Setting aside the time/age concerns, was the corpse mummified? Was his animal skin clothing rainbow dyed? Do they have specific measuring equipment to determine abnormally enlarged or bruised orifice? Let us for one second consider the corpse did in fact have some unusual disturbances in that area of focus, what is to say he was not abused by a passing liberal Rhino, or one of its ancestors?
LA replies:
Thank you for my first laugh today. I needed that. :-)
Those liberal Rhinos, a pest in pre-history, as they are today.
Randy B. replies:
Not the world’s best author, an acceptable engineer, and a hell of a softball player; but every once in a while I put a smile on people’s faces, and that make up for what would otherwise be counted as a talentless life.
LA replies:
Thanks for my second laugh of the day. My outlook is improving by the minute. :-)
April 9
Ferg writes: Could this be the long sought “Missing Kink”? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 07, 2011 02:25 PM | Send
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