A curiously buried 5,000 year-old skeleton has caused some researchers to speculate he could have been gay or transsexual.
The recently discovered male skeleton is believed to have belonged to the Corded Ware culture, which flourished in North Europe between 2500 and 2900 BCE. The Corded Ware culture is well-known for their meticulous burial practices, which included burying men with their heads facing west and with weapons of war. Yet, this skeleton was found facing east and with domestic items included in his grave, the exact same method used for the burial of women. This has led scholars to theorise he could have been homosexual or transsexual.
"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," Kamila Remisova Vesinova, a researcher with the Czech Archaeological Society said as she announced the discovery in a news conference.
"So we think, based on data, that it could be a member of a so-called third gender, which were people either with different sexual orientation or transsexuals or just people who identified themselves differently from the rest of the society."
However, other scholars have since criticised newspapers for trumpeting the finding of a “gay caveman,” because there is so much more research to do before this conclusion can be safely reached. Archaeologists point out that the “gay caveman” label is incorrect on two counts - firstly, because the term "cavemen" typically refers to Neanderthals who lived 30,000 years ago; and secondly because there are many other possible reasons for the strange burial method used in this instance.
Kristina Killgrove, an anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of North Carolina, made this clear when she wrote:
"Just because all the burials you've found to date are coded male and female based on grave goods doesn't mean there aren't alternate forms you haven't found and doesn't mean that the alternate form you have found has a lot of significance."
"If this burial represents a transgendered individual (as well it could), that doesn't necessarily mean the person had a 'different sexual orientation' and certainly doesn't mean that he would have considered himself (or that his culture would have considered him) 'homosexual'."
Rosemary Joyce, from the University of California, Berkeley, is an anthropologist who focuses on sex and gender in archaeology, agreed with this line of thinking as she stated there is not enough proof to yet prove the skeleton’s sexual identity either way. Joyce asserts that the only thing that can be proved at this stage is an “anomalous burial” and also suggested that a third-sexed individual would probably have received a third format of burial distinguishable from men and women altogether.