Really? Archaeologists Find 'Gay Caveman' Near Prague

Jeez Luise! Sometimes I think there are so-called science reporters out there who just like to write stupid shit to piss off archaeologists.  Hat tip to my blogging friend Dale at Faith in Honest Doubt for linking to this article at Time who employ these dumb-shit know-nothings about archaeology/anthropology reporters.

Archaeologists Find 'Gay Caveman' Near Prague: Remains Outed by Typical 'Female' Burial - TIME NewsFeed

So what is my problem?  "Caveman" that is my frickin problem!    Yes, in popular ignorant discourse "caveman" came into common usage many years ago because SOME Paleolithic aged remains were found in caves. Yet not all, nor even most Paleolithic aged archeological sites have been found in caves. So why "caveman"?  

That aside, the Upper Paleolithic ended about 12 thousand years ago. So this find is placed chronologically firmly in the European Neolithic, when people had long domesticated crops and animals, and lived a settled life in villages.  So, these people were not even close to what was ignorantly stereotyped as "cavemen".  Is it really so hard for a Time magazine writer to get some of this basic stuff right?  After all, its all on Wikipedia as I have linked to here, and a quick glance at those pages reveals that those articles are fairly accurate.

And then there is the assumption that this alleged "caveman" was "gay".  I would bet a thousand dollars that the researchers responsible for this find didn't use that term.   But the dumb-ass Time reporter thought he would go ahead and run with his assumptions.  A more accurate interpretation is that the individual in question would better described as "transgender" rather than gay or homosexual. 

Europe's allegedly "Largest Gay New Service" at least gets it right in describing the deceased individual as transgendered, which is probably how the researchers described the significance of the find.


Its probably good to keep in mind that it is our modern day conception that homosexual behavior leads to the pigeonholing people into a "gay" identity. Yet we know that historically (Greek) and ethnologically (New Guinea tribe, read about them as an undergrad and forgot their name) that homosexual behavior doesn't necessarily translate into an exclusive "gay" identity.