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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 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!)