To Think That Archaeology Proves That Men Cannot Be Women

[MrsMappFlint]

A burial site has been found in Cardiff. It dates from the 6th or 7th Century.
The skeletons are all women.

In death, when all genitals have gone, the skeleton retains the truth about the simple fact-it is either male or female.

There is no third way. That's science and hundreds of years after death, the truth of biology is retained in the bone.

Your sex is in your very bones-male or female-that's it. In the end, that's all there is.

Men can pretend to be women but skeletons tell the truth.

The story is on the BBC website.

We don’t need 6th c skeletons to ‘prove’ anything!

Intersex people might disagree but don’t let that get in the way of your argument.

@Holdonforsummer Intersex is an outdated term and has been changed to Differences in sexual development (DSD).

This better reflects that there is not 'inter' = between, there is only differences in the binary sexual development pathways - male or female pathways that can present very different challenges for those individuals born with these differences.

Archaeology also demonstrates that for tens of thousands of years, since the very earliest evidence of anatomically and behaviourally modern humans (Homo sapiens), some individuals in every society on the globe conformed to non-binary gender identities and roles. In the European Upper Palaeolithic, some of these individuals were celebrated and revered as spiritual leaders in their communities (i.e. shamans).

Please, PLEASE, make this stop!

🙄

No, we don't but things are in such a dire state that we do

How many intersex skeletons have been found?

The only reliable part of the human skeleton that can be used to make a sex ID within the archaeological record is the pelvis. There is a fairly large range in the morphology of a "typical" pelvis for both sexes and the area of overlap is relatively large. This is because humans display relatively less sexual dimorphism than many other species of primate. Because of this, almost all sex IDs for archaeological skeletal remains are estimates because many pelvises fall in the range where they might be either male or female.

Given those with DSDs are all either male or female not sure what your logic is here.

That’s how I was trained, these days they just do a DNA test because skeletal morphology was only 80-90% accurate whereas DNA is like 99.98% accurate

Intersex people have asked repeatedly not to be drawn into the trans debate, which this clearly is about. Those with DSD are not "both" or "neither". They are xx or xy.

But sex in living creatures has been around for over a billion years, it's not going to stop now!

Gender identity is made up bollocks. A female shaman was not "non binary" FFS. If that society decided it was a male role and female did it, that does not make her a man, or non binary.

Same re: training. I'm old enough to remember the time before everything was just chucked in a laboratory machine! I was mostly just responding to the question about intersex skeletons. I think from an archaeological perspective and strictly referring to the actual morphology of the bones, one could make a reasonable argument that a large proportion of the skeletons that have been uncovered from prehistoric archaeological sites and were given a sex ID before about 10 years ago were not securely identifiable as either clearly male or female.

Jesus Christ we're going back to the 6th century now to try and prove a point.

You've got your court judgement, you've 'won' is that not enough? Do we need this continuous stream of posts?

What sex a skeleton is doesn’t really tell us about gender roles and gender nonconformance. Since DNA testing for sex was folded in and already excavated remains began to be tested en masse, what we have found is way more evidence of women living as men and vice versa through history. In many graves, the grave goods were used to sex a skeleton as much as morphology so if you found a burial with a mirror, jewellery worn by women, and household items like a yarn spinning distaff associated with women the skeleton would be sexed as a woman. Same if you found the grave of a warrior, sword, shield, perhaps buried with a chariot and four sacrificed horses, almost always sexed as male.

DNA has shockingly found many of these were the opposite sex expected by historical gender roles. So we know now that around 20% of Viking warriors for example, were women. Whereas before DNA the Viking “shield maiden” was accounted a myth and it was thought perhaps only the elite ruling women sometimes dressed up as warriors to give stirring speeches to their 100% male army…but didn’t really fight nor command units of fighters.

The same sort of realisation with many graves where the person was buried as a woman but most definitely was a male.

So skeleton male or female tells us nothing about how strict the gender role were enforced on the basis of sex or how many of each lived as the opposite sex, or even if it was viewed as that back then.

I'm not weighing in on whether gender identity is bollocks. I am trying to answer the question posed by the original post, as an actual trained archaeologist and anthropologist. The archaeological record, and anthropology as well, clearly demonstrates that in societies around the globe, and for tens of thousands of years, individuals have had gender identities that do not always conform to their biological sex. It's nothing new, and in most of these non-western and prehistoric societies, these individuals were accepted, and even celebrated. A few examples: Quariwarmi (Incan culture), Yuta shamans of Japan, there are 5 recognised genders within the Bugi culture of Indonesia, Anarya (ancient Scythian clergy).

Yes exactly! I just posted about how they’ve been going back and re-sexing old digs

Very true, we can discern third gender from historical records, but when it comes to societies with no written record we really have no idea how a woman in a male dominated role or vice versa was viewed. Certainly can’t extrapolate gender identity from any archaeological evidence alone.

But where there are historical records..the people talking about themselves and their society we do find third genders (and more)

That's nonsense, because people with DSDs are either male or female. Even skeletons from those people who had DSDs from millions of years ago would only show either a male person or a female person.
There isn't a third sex.

And only 0.018% of the population have DSDs anyway.

But where there are historical records..the people talking about themselves and their society we do find third genders (and more)

...... and yet there are still only two sexes.

You can’t say that people had gender identities that didn’t align with their sex unless you accept the concept of a gender identity ffs.

i personally might say you can’t tell if people wee happily conforming to the norms of their society based on sex. And that clearly depends on the local norms.

its clear that that those norms are not always the same as we have today

i recall one isolated tribe with quite clear roles - men hunted , women did babies and gathering. But unlike our society, women were seen as key to the survival and were treated as full equals in all decision makings. The gender roles were biology related but a patriarchal society had not formed as a result. I could imagine that would be quite different to live in.

Some living creatures do change sex.

https://www.bbcearth.com/news/fish-are-the-sex-switching-masters-of-the-animal-kingdom