Warrior buried in women's clothes, DMA test

[Igneococcus]

That Finnish warrior buried in women's clothes is a "non-binary person with an extra X chromosome". This is reaching new heights in idiocy:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/633f6690-f2f9-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979?shareToken=1a9ca6deaed6c83e06e4207040280633

Yeah everything is shiny in Anglo-Saxon lit too. Where you might expect them to talk about the colour of blood, they'd talk about the shininess. Shiny gems, shiny swords, shiny blood. Makes sense in a world full of unshiny stuff I guess.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Alice Roberts has a massive blind spot on this issue. Her arguments are really weak, and when this is pointed out she just blocks everyone and flounces from Twitter accusing people of bullying her.

I can cut her some slack for having to deal with creationists at post-grad level.

'The condition in which males are born with one or more extra X chromosomes is known as Klinefelter syndrome. With its prevalence of 1 in 576 male births, XXY is the most common sex-chromosomal aneuploidy in humans (Nielsen & Wohlert,1991).'

I hadn't realised it was that common.

@ClumpingBambooIsALie

Could be interesting if we can try to get past our preconceptions and current ways thinking about things… to work out what we can actually deduce from the evidence about how this person who may have had an obvious difference of sexual development was integrated within that specific society. It didn't seem to have a lot of detail about exactly what the person was buried with and how they know what the connotations of those items were in that society. I think it's a problem to use retroactive labels like androgynous and non-binary that have culture-specific meanings for us; it would be better to be more specific and name biological conditions plus the details of the body and the burial and then clearly state what's extrapolation or surmise.

This. I'm not an archaeologist but have read enough to know that there is some interesting work going on in the area, in particular questions about whether gender identity mattered in the past, and whether other identities, such as 'elder' might have been more important.

Although in the end, almost all archaeology (DNA and isotope related stuff excepted) is surmise, and is so often infused with the preoccupations of the present that it tends to tell us more about ourselves than the past. We make it into a shape that feels comfortable, not that is true.

“... new DNA tests suggested that it was a non-binary person with an extra X chromosome.”

Whit? That’s some new fangled DNA test that can declare non binary status...

I can cut her some slack for having to deal with creationists at post-grad level.

I'm don't know if I'm prepared to cut slack anymore. In some ways it's actually worse than creationists, because Roberts' chair is Professor of the Public Engagement in Science. Imagine doing the opposite of your actual job.

@KittenKong

“... new DNA tests suggested that it was a non-binary person with an extra X chromosome.”

Whit? That’s some new fangled DNA test that can declare non binary status...

If there is, what a gist to everyone: us because we can tell if someone is for real, them because they can tell if they are for real...

gift! argh

Elina Salmela, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Helsinki, said: “According to current data, it is likely that the individual found in Suontaka had the chromosomes XXY, although the DNA results are based on a very small set of data.”

So they don't know "it is likely".

We used to joke at home when I was a kid (our house was all mad history and archaeology nuts, will a dark sense of humour) that we would be buried with obscure objects to puzzle future archaeologists. Dad was almost buried with a silver polar bear (who now sits on my kitchen window ledge).

@Vanishun

But yes, why assume vanity? Mirrors could be used for lots of things including reflecting light, communicating using flashes, keeping an eye out behind you, etc. etc. They're in most prepper packs and I don't think it's to check your makeup.

There’s an Anglo-Saxon diatribe about how Vikings were seducing good Christian women with the cleanliness of their persons and the washing, combing and grooming of their hair.

Ancient Egyptians used mirrors. I seem to remember reading that the kohl was used to protect the eyes from the glare of the sun. The wigs were because of the nits. Not vanity but practicality.

They only had very little usable DNA from a badly degraded femur (too degraded to tell if it is from a female or male skeleton), so this isn't based on a karyogram but, as far as I understood it from the limited information in the paper, they looked for X-chromosmal and Y-chromosomal markers, modeled what they would expect if it is XX or XY or XXY or contaminated and the data they obtained, they think, convincingly matches what their model predicted for XXY. It would be interesting to see their methodology in more detail.

What new ignorance of history is this among academics? It's been known for years that Nordic peoples took great pride in their appearance. Hair was very well groomed. There's always been rumours of women warriors and certainly women were not passive belongings. It's the heritage they passed on to us.

The exception being Harald Horridlocks, who notably made a vow neither to wash nor to comb his hair until he'd done something or other: killed someone or seized a throne or some such. The day he did it, he washed and combed his hair and became Harald Fairhair overnight.

I wish I could remember who he actually was! He was a legend in our family, always invoked if one of us children came to a meal with unkempt barnet.

This is the person assumed to be male for years because of the things with them- weapons and other things that indicated they were important,?

And when someone said hold on its s woman there was extensive and ongoing speculation around how in that case they either weren't actually a warrior?

Or.. anything to explain the impossibility of high profile and weapons can be female?

Bias-

Two swords, weapons traditionally associated with masculinity,

IF it's the one I'm thinking of.

When assumed to be male no digging into DNA, no mystery.

Omg female? Can't be right. Need to keep looking till we find something to explain.

NB is being confused here with GNC.

To say that the warrior was nonbinary would imply that they identified as neither a man nor a woman.

Whereas all we actually have evidence for is that the person was gender-nonconformant (or rather, gender-stereotype-nonconforming). Whether we even have evidence for that would depend on whether we have enough evidence to say confidently how the "genders" typically behaved in that place and time.

But as the person had a DSD (diffeence of sexual development) this raises a second issue. Such people are nowadays said to be "intersex" (in between the sexes). (This is not really true, as Klinefelter's is clearly a male DSD, but...) If this is the case then if this person was NB then they were also non-trans, since clearly their gender identity would have mirrored their physical sex. Nowadays NB and intersex are completely different things - I haven't seen evidence that intersex people are more likely to be NB, yet in this article IS & NB come close to being conflated.

A relevant programme on Radio 4 this morning:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ykpf

In this programme, the historian Jerry Brotton asks how far this science is changing the study of history, and where it might take us. He asks if genetics is providing us with the ultimate tools to understand our historical origins - and perhaps our future - or if we're walking into a new era of bio-colonialism. Today, scientists are subject to accusations that they are harvesting our DNA and making genetic assumptions about people who have already suffered under European scientific racism and colonisation. These groups now debate the ethics of the bones of their ancestors being analysed to play their part in the evolution of modern western science.

And this:

If historians are learning from the science of DNA analysis, what can scientists learn from historians when making assumptions about nations, race and the colonial past? What will the DNA of the historical future look like?

First they came for the butch lesbians of history… then they came for the exhumed Finnish warriors…

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Going by the literature, shiny was prized by Nordic (Finns are not Nordic, but I'll use that shorthand, ok?) peoples. Mirrors would definitely not have been only for women.

Finns are Nordic, just not Scandinavian. Still, a Scandinavian power, Sweden, controlled Finland for seven centuries starting in 1150 (and even before then there were Viking settlements in southern Finland). The grave dates to c1050-1300. I don't know whether we know enough to say that this was a Viking grave, although a museum in Denmark dubbed it as such.

(not sure what this person's preferred pronouns were, so will go by his sex): what makes them go for non-binary rather than transwoman?