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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 Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:00PM (11 children)
No mother-in-law jokes? What's this world coming to? Are Soylentils really that pussy whipped? "Oh my GOD, I can't compare this old battleaxe to my mother-in-law, what if the wife reads this? I'D BE DEAD!!"
No, I'm not surprised that a woman could have been a respected Viking. There have been a number of women in history who have been warriors, and led troops and causes. Joan of Arc, anyone? Or, Jean D'arc, or something like that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:25PM (8 children)
My mother-in-law is dead, you insensitive clod!
Also, Boudica in Britain and Dihya [wikipedia.org] in North Africa, resisting the muslim invasion.
Women might not be as physically strong as the strongest men, but they're strong enough to be soldiers. They are certainly mentally tough enough. It comes down to training and conditioning.
Culturally, matriarchies are as capable of martial prowess as patriarchies. The Iroquois were and are a matriarchal society, and they ruled their neck of the woods for centuries.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:35PM
"you insensitive clod!"
She loves me after all! Gotta love those strong women!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:34PM (1 child)
Iroquois warbands were composed mostly of men and led by men. Civil society may have been matriarchal, but as far as my reading has shown, their warmaking was male dominated.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday September 12 2017, @05:14PM
Which makes sense - two universal truths: war is a dangerous business, and women are the long-term strength of the tribe. Wipe out 90% of the men in a tribe, and you're going to have some manpower issues for a few decades. Wipe out 90% of the women, and you're not going to have a tribe in a few decades.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday September 12 2017, @05:20PM (4 children)
OK... a bit of reality here. SOME women can train up to be strong enough to be excellent primitive soldiers, but usually only in positions of leadership. But most men can't either. Notable primitive warrior women always seem to come from the nobility, but so do almost all of the notable male primitive warriors. The only actual (as opposed to mythological) exceptions I've heard of is some tribes in the amazon jungles...and even then I believe it was only along one side of the river.
There were rumors of some tribe along the northern shores of the black sea around the time of Homer, but I know of no actual evidence that they were real. (Homer gave us the word "Amazon" to describe them.)
When sufficient evidence is available, it generally appears that the women famed as warriors were not actually warrior, but more political leaders forced into a position where they had to act as warriors. Some were capable enough to survive for quite awhile in that role, and nobody lives forever.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @08:44PM (2 children)
SOME women [...] primitive soldiers
Maybe some day you will grow up and get over your silly chauvinism.
Since the invention of the crank-cocked crossbow, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, it's been possible for a female to be just as deadly as a guy.
Had somebody figured out the compound bow [google.com] earlier, they could even have had a high rate of fire from chicks.
Now add gunpowder to the mix.
The only "primitive" thing here is your "thinking".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @03:13AM (1 child)
Oh please, don't be on a hair trigger. He specifically indicated he was talking about primitive warriors. Additionally, he indicates this is something that not all men were capable of, either. It's not a surprise that not everybody is Gerard Butler's character or Lucy Lawless' character. Xena may not have a real-world counterpart like Leonidas, but there were a few real examples upthread.
The fact that this idea that women can't be warriors persists with modern technology is a completely different issue, and it's interesting how even feminism is afraid to rock the boat there (have seen some boat rocking, though, so that's good). Despite that, even in present day, there are examples of women warriors. I believe we had two examples a while back.
Personally, I'd like to know if the cultural conditions that gave us these real-world examples of women warriors both in primitive combat and modern combat were very different, in those times and places vs. our present global civilization. Is it the case that those cultures had more gender equality than our modern culture?
In the book series I'm reading, which involves primitive-ish combat (sorceries of mass destruction, though, so ymmv), gender equality is a very common trait among humans of various ethnicities. I reserve final judgement until I've finished slogging through all 11,000 pages, but I wish the real world looked a bit more like that world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @12:45PM
A burial site discovered in Peru shows that a Chachapoyas war band unit of Indian auxiliaries consisted of both men and women, and at the time of Pizarro their primary weapons were stone maces. Perhaps women were not as strong as men, but in a battle every pair of hands counts. Those chicks were grunts, peasants, not nobility. In times of great turmoil, when history is written, you'll see all humans, men, women, and sometimes even children, taking part. If they aren't, then whatever is going on is all just a make-believe.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:04PM
"The Few, the Proud, the Not-too-bright, the Expendable."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 12 2017, @06:56PM (1 child)
I agree with the Runaway and extend the remarks to include a general dissatisfaction at the lack of
1) Nobody making fun of the "no true scottman" argument for being a "no true scottsman" argument. Or Scotts-woman as the case seems to be.
2) Nobody making fun of the ridiculous article text by juxtaposing "the first high-status female Viking warrior to be identified" with "suggesting a surprising degree of gender balance in the Vikings' violent social order". Its like claiming slavery in the confederate south was good because evidence has been found that one time a slave laughed out loud, so clearly the slavery experience was balanced life with a normal ratio of joy and sorrow. Seriously? One chick means viking society as a unit was all equality and feminism? Damn.
3) Only one comment making fun of contemporary trans issues. We're all assuming this warrior wanted pronouns like "she" used for her, SN should be a safe space where Xe or He or WTF the warrior wanted to identify as is the pronoun we will use. If Xe wanted to be considered a warrior dude with the cis birth-males, well, we should consider Xe a warrior like the real ones.
4) An absence is not necessarily proof there was never nutthin there, if some dude and his woman got the axe in some surprise attack or WTF, adjacent / combined burial is a thing, just because my G-G-Grandaunt is buried next to a headstone with my G-G-Granduncles name on it that doesn't mean she was in the Union Army in the civil war, although she was closely related to someone who marched thru Tennessee and all that stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @03:35AM
#2 and #4 are too stupid to bother formulating a response to. #3 is your winner for lulz.
Yes, there's a distinct possibility this is a trans man biologically speaking. In that case, the correct pronoun is “he.” Obviously, the brain is not available for an imaging study, so we'll never know. I don't understand why this is complicated or confusing. You're that freaked out by a 1 in 10,000 possibility? Or have you just read too much echo chamber bullshit?
Either way, this is my new challenge! Come up with something that sounds as cool as a shadow object [theflatearthsociety.org] to attempt to fit the gender essentialist theory to all the data!
I'm going to be really disappointed if this is where gender essentialism invokes a conspiracy. (Unless you can somehow blame it on NASA!) I guess I might as well get used to disappointment, because the conspiracy invoked is feminism, which in turn invokes rape culture. Amazing! Let's at least have one unified theory of gender essentialism. I want to know what gender essentialism's shadow object is.
(Please, please, please not only come up with a shadow object but rope NASA in too! Crazy conspiracy theories are a hobby of mine. Make it as offensive as you want, but remember that it has to explain all of the data that could be measured in an independent study. Unfortunately, the feminism conspiracy theory just doesn't reach the threshold of crazy. Sad!)