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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the Valkyries,-Amazons,...Xena? dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @03:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @03:35AM (#567064)

    #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!)