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DNA proves fearsome Viking warrior was a woman:
A 10th century Viking unearthed in the 1880s was like a figure from Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries: an elite warrior buried with a sword, an ax, a spear, arrows, a knife, two shields, and a pair of warhorses. [...] a new study published today in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology finds that the warrior was a woman—the first high-status female Viking warrior to be identified. Excavators first uncovered the battle-ready body among several thousand Viking graves near the Swedish town of Birka, but for 130 years, most assumed it was a man—known only by the grave identifier, Bj 581. [...] Now, the warrior's DNA proves her sex, suggesting a surprising degree of gender balance in the Vikings' violent social order.
Her name was Lagertha.
Reference: Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, et. al., A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23308
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 13 2017, @04:25PM
And it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view that we wouldn't care. A female can only produce one child a year while a single male can impregnate, potentially, hundreds of women in that time. Other males are just competition whereas women provide the means to further your lineage. It's only the primitive instinct that no longer has any real value in modern society that leaves us condoning behavior that when analyzed objectively and in a clear headed fashion is certainly in no way about equality.
Furthermore, the idea that your "lineage" is even important really doesn't make sense if you think about it objectively. Your children and grandchildren, and especially later descendants, don't do anything for you personally. Your kids might bring you some happiness, but they might also bring you a lot of misery, and it seems to me that it's more often the latter. Your grandkids you'll barely have much contact with, and any later ones you'll probably be dead so you'll never see them. The whole idea of having kids is just a high-risk gamble requiring an enormous investment for really no payout. If you want companionship, you'll do a lot better with a cat or dog, and you won't have to spend nearly as much money or time. (Even the neediest dogs don't need as much attention as kids. Cats don't need much attention at all; you can hold them in your lap when you want, or ignore them if you're busy.) With a cat, you can leave it at home alone with food and water for several days at a time without worrying about it; you can't leave a kid more than an hour or two by itself, and have to spend a fortune on day-care or babysitters. And with a cat or dog, you don't have to worry about getting in trouble with the police and being prosecuted for child neglect, which can happen if you let your kids play outside by themselves.
If we're worried about perpetuating the species and society, the answer is simple: let the government control breeding (perhaps all artificially), and leave child-raising to full-time professionals. Letting amateurs do it has had disastrous consequences, costing the society greatly in legal costs (how much does family court cost the taxpayer?) and resulting in countless troubled people (look at all the people in prison). There was an excellent book about such a society, called "Brave New World".