Photo: ZUMA Press
Archaeologists investigating a
5,000-year-old Copper Age grave in the Czech Republic believe they unearthed the first known remains of a gay or transvestite caveman,
reports the Telegraph.
The man was apparently buried as if he were a woman, an aberrant
practice for an ancient culture known for its strict burial procedures.
Since the grave dates to between 2900 and 2500 BC, the man would
have been a member of the Corded Ware culture, a late Stone Age and
Copper Age people named after the unique kind of pottery they produced.
Men in this culture were traditionally buried lying on their right
side with their heads pointing west, but this man was instead buried on
his left side with his head pointing east, which is how women were
typically buried.
"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," said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova
Vesinova. "Far more likely is that he was a man with a different
sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual."
Another clue is that Corded Ware men would typically be buried
alongside weapons, hammers and flint knives, as well as food and drink
to prepare them for their journey to the other side. This man's
grave instead contained only a traditional egg-shaped pot, which was
what women were typically buried with.
With all the evidence taken together, archaeologists are confident
that the best explanation for the strange burial is that the man was
effeminate, perhaps a homosexual, and possibly a transvestite.
"We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be
described as a 'transsexual' or 'third gender grave' in the Czech
Republic," reiterated cooperating archaeologist Katerina Semradova.
Semradova also noted that archaeologists from a previous dig had
uncovered a grave from the Mesolithic period where a female warrior
was buried as a man, so mixed gender burials, though rare, were not
unprecedented.
No comments:
Post a Comment