You People Fail At Science.

A skeleton was found buried without any sex-specific artifacts, in a very old grave. Women in the decedent's culture were buried facing the same direction as this dead body was facing. No DNA testing has been done on the bones. It is not always easy to determine sex from visual examination of bare human skeletal remains. What is the obvious conclusion any high-quality scientist will certainly draw from this find?

GAY/TRANSGENDER/3rd SEX SKELETON FOUND IN CZECH REPUBLIC!!!!1!

Quote of the day: "To state unequivocally that this individual was a homosexual or heterosexual transvestite, or indeed anything else, on the available evidence is at best somewhat speculative and at worst sensationalistic," -James Adovasio, executive director, Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute

When I first heard of this story, I had two immediate reactions: "Talk about your arguments from silence," and, "What do you want to bet the scientist that made this amazing "discovery" is a queer?"

I will be glad to ROFL if they get around to DNA testing and find XX instead of XY in the bones. You know what? Some chicks have skinny hips. Some of them these days even look like dudes when they are ALIVE, fashion trends being what they are. To claim that this is a gay person's burial before knowing the corpse was male is the height of irresponsible sensationalistic reporting (in other words, the best way to get a fat research funding grant without having done anything significant). A more right-thinking individual would say "gee she has a narrow pelvic opening! Let's run some more tests before going public . . . "

Of course there is also the possibility that we are not dealing with a right-thinking person. We could have a scientist who is herself queer, or a closeted queer, or bi/curious, who found an irrefutable way to project her sexual uncertainties onto a dead woman. We could have someone interested in promoting a queer lifestyle as an historical norm. We could have, in short, a lot of different ways the archeologists in this case are coming to silly conclusions based on moot evidence.

Moderately-surprising in today's "reporting" is the way nobody seems to be questioning the idea that there were transgendered people 'way back when, who were accepted by society as such to the extent they were buried the wrong way. A third gender? Really? Find me three reputable scientific references to any such thing from prior to 1950, I dare you.