Scientists say that the way the recently discovered “gay caveman” was
buried actually may have had nothing to do with his sexual orientation.
Could he have died before coming out?
As numerous media outlets reported yesterday, scientists in the Czech Republic recently found a caveman whom they think may have been the first recorded prehistoric homosexual. As the Daily Mail put it:
During that period, men were traditionally buried lying on their right side with the head pointing towards the west; women on their left side with the head facing east.
In this case, the man was on his left side with his head facing west. Another clue is that men tended to be interred with weapons, hammers and flint knives as well as several portions of food and drink to accompany them to the other side.
[…] The ‘gay caveman’ was buried with household jugs, and no weapons.
However, today new scientists are casting aspersions on the story, as if it was not rigorously researched and fact-checked by every outlet that printed it. As anthropologist Kristina Killgrove wrote on her blog:
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.
In addition, archaeologists point out that the “caveman” skeleton actually came from the Bronze Age, tens of thousands of years after what we traditionally think of as “cavemen” ruled the earth.
So these scientists say that facts show that the “gay caveman” was not gay, and was not a caveman. However! There’s nothing we’ve seen that proves he wasn’t gay. And, since that’s the case, maybe he happened to like to dress up as a caveman — you know, a retro look! So basically, what we’re going to take away from this experience is that the gay caveman story was a true thing with no holes in it at all. Go Internet!
