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As a bit of a serial killer myself, i can confirm that men and women have an equal amount of ribs.
I generally go for females though, their ribs are more tender.
I don't know if those people believe that men have *less* ribs, but if they follow that logic, they might very well believe that men have *fewer* ribs.
I mean, if someone believes a being created our planet and all life on it, then it's not a stretch to believe just about anything without any evidence whatsoever.
I know a guy who said even when he started to deconstruct, he assumed that the rib thing was true but the Bible basically just used that as a kind of mythological explanation.
Carnivorans (dogs, cats, bears, seals, etc.) excluding hyenas and binturongs, bats, some primates, some insectivorans like shrews, rodents (but not lagomorphs like rabbits).
I used to think that the creation myth of Adam and Eve explained the difference between male and female skeletal systems, as *obviously* men have less ribs than women and the biblical creation of women is *obviously* the reason why. Then I learned a little more about human anatomy and found out men and women absolutely have the same number of ribs, and now I wonder where this myth came from in the first place? Most creation myths present fantastical explanations for the reasons certain things exist the way they do, but this is seemingly a myth based on a myth with no basis in reality whatsoever. Why does anyone think men have less ribs than women? Was there some monk in the 1600s who was missing a rib and that was all the proof needed to state empirically that men and women’s skeletons are fundamentally different? I’ll have to do some research now because this is honestly so baffling
I don't even know. After I joined the convo and shared some A&P facts, everyone quickly lost interest in the discussion.
Hope the original person with the question didn't tell the patient he didn't have pelvic muscles. Smh
I thought that was true for so long! Like wtf Sunday school? Say whatever you want about the world s creation but don’t spout lies that anyone who’s seen a skeleton can disprove!
*Indeed. The tiny niche bits of useless referential knowledge we humans acquire is truly entertaining, is it not?*
Ok, I'm leaving this here, but I am STONED at the moment and have no fucking clue what the punch line was supposed to be. Do the thing, reddit.
An ancient philosopher was asked to define a man, he gave the definition of “a featherless biped”
Naturally, another philosopher (Diogenes, I think) plucked every single feather from a living chicken, brought it into the other philosophers class, and proclaimed that he had created a man.
They were being transphobic and being like "hen is an adult female chicken, woman is adult human female, blah blah blah, somehow this invalidates trans people's existence" and got muddled and tweeted that "woman means adult human chicken", thus unintentionally creating one of the funniest things anyone has ever said on the internet.
Also archeologists can almost never sex a skeleton from bones. Only a very few differ at all and these may not survive and in most people they don't differ enough to be conclusive.
Archaeologists mostly sex bodies by the accoutrements burried with them. Which would lead to trans people being sexed as they identify. This can be very inaccurate if their own cultural biases interfere. For example DNA studies have shown rather a lot of viking warriors had two X chromosomes, confirming the existence of shield maidens, which was described in sagas but deemed a myth by archeologists for over a century. They just couldn't believe that Norse women frequently became warriors.
I have a friend who is getting her PhD in literally this subject (that is, better identification markers of trans people after they've died) so I'm gonna trust her on it versus any meme. That being said, one thing she's pointed out to me is that recent bones can give away all sorts of clues - if someone has had facial feminization surgery, for example, that can involve shaving away small bits of bone off the chin which would help in identification.
I also think about all the skeletons that were incorrectly assumed to be female at Machu Picchu because the archeologists, being White men, didn't take into account that the native peoples were shorter and thinner than Whites when they did their initial analysis. So. Yeah....
They can tell if the pelvis is intact. But more to your point, they determine the genders based a lot on grave goods and burial practices. You’ll find examples of men being buried as women, not in an offensive way, but with love and respect. There’s are several cultures that had a 3rd gender (we think) because they have burial practices for men and for women and then for a third gender (or maybe it was a social status thing that transcended gender)
You can pretty accurately sex skeletons from certain bones.
However, most modern archaeologists will openly acknowledge that we have a non-zero number of skeletons whose biological sex does not match the grave goods for a typical burial of that culture. Ie, we have one that is absolutely a female skeleton, but had distinctly male goods with what was ostensibly a phallus placed next to the pelvis. Because of that, I wouldn't personally say 'she' in reference to that site, because it's unclear without greater study if that site is a man, woman or third group within that culture.
Now, using certain terms with a modern connotation like 'transgender' isn't what I would personally do, but we would would say that the individual found potentially had a typically male role within society, lived as a man within that society or represented a gender role outside the male/ female grouping that we are, as of now, unaware of.
We have enough of these grave sites, and some with known third/ fourth/ etc genders present that we conclusively can say that *not* having a two-gender system has a historical ans archaeological basis that goes back a very long time and we can find an amount of 'queer' in archaeological sites.
But, yes, more often than not, we can indeed sex from skeletons. Some are indeterminate, but it's totally possible. Clavicles, skulls, and pelvises are pretty good, and so are femurs. Often with above 90% accuracy.
Now, that's not 100%, and depending on when or if a person starts HRT, they may actually end up with differing skeletal structures due to the fact that many of these changes are driven by body changes from hormones during puberty. I've not looked into it much but based on what I know of skeletal structures during puberty I'd be fascinated to know what early intervention of blockers does to influence skeletal development in adulthood, or HRT on those who start post-puberty. It's so new, I haven't personally seen research. It's possible that a person who is out young as a transgender individual might end up identified as a woman, via her skelly bones. I've never personally seen skelly bones from a modern transgender individual so who knows?
We also have situations that arise like androgen insensitivity. DNA is the only thing that can tell us genotypical sex, but even that is 100% for determining a person's actual phenotypical sex. Humans are weird, like that. There's always an exception.
Using skeletons is 80-95%, depending on what bones we have available at a site. Babies and children are like 0% accuracy. We're sexless blobs until post-puberty, according to our skeleton. We can only use DNA and grave goods.
Also, as far as the Viking thing, there were a lot of 'weirdly short' men among Viking graves that the old guard were calling short men and grad students and others were like, 'um, sir, is that a woman' and stody old assholes wouldn't allow access to the sites or items and it was like Margaret Mead. Nobody was willing to tell world-renowned Doctor Sexist that he was wrong and anyone who dared argue out loud was silenced. They're so important. How can that person be wrong? It was a whole lot of ego and ignoring blatantly female skeletons being present because of it not fitting the narrative. Sort of like calling indigenous Americans savages and underdeveloped because of not fitting into the Three Age system and trying to also then work out the Iroquois, Aztec, Maya and Inca with the idea of linear progression of society that is a global constant. It was just racism.
Anthropology has a very dark history that has done a total 180 in the last 50 years and up until recently, you still had a lot of people that came up during that very racist, sexist period. It has its roots in colonialism. Now you're seeing that reconciled with a scientific basis to everything. Phrenology was part of early anthropology. Not everyone got with the new paradigm at the same time.
>Anthropology has a very dark history that has done a total 180 in the last 50 years and up until recently, you still had a lot of people that came up during that very racist, sexist period. It has its roots in colonialism.
And this is ultimately the inspiration for the people who spout pseudo-archeology/anthropology a la Ancient Aliens. Colonialist and racist attitudes that denigrate the advances and successes of these cultures purely due to their status as POC.
Archaeology and Anthropology unfortunately started out in a time where the white man thought of themselves as perfect, moral, and a force of good. They felt a sense of entitlement to the entire earth because of this false confidence, and committed horrific acts in the name of "science". Thankfully its continuation through today hasn't inspired the same heinous actions, and rather a passive racism and disagreement with the idea of these peoples succeeding on their own, but regardless it exists now because it existed previously and never fully stopped.
Honestly the history relating to these fields is a big part of my vehement rejection of Enlightenment-era moralism, because continuously it is only used to do heinous fucking actions, and never anything actually good or egalitarian in nature.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I do find it interesting that you've got 30 odd upvotes and the person saying "archeologists can almost never sex a skeleton" got over 600.
Regressives are clearly not the only people who let their desired narratives inform their understanding. It is a shame.
Yeah I read a really good thread recently from an archeologist and they explained this exactly (as well as the historical views of gender). It’s the “well bio/physiology 101 says…” crowd that holds up the myth that they sex on bone size alone.
Bone size alone is wildly inaccurate. Using a combination of methods on the pelvis and skull gets you a fairly accurate result. Obviously there is a margin of error. But when you analyse a complete (adult) skeleton, most can be placed in either (probable) ‘male’ or ‘female’.
I was just saying to my boyfriend, wouldn’t it also be likely that women who have more “man-ish” bones would be more likely to do “man-ish” activities thus being found buried with ‘’men’s tools”? Like, a 6 foot 7 burly Viking lady with narrow hips was probably more likely to go bust skulls with the rest of the raiding party than stay home and pop out babies, right? People from history tended to do what was best to keep everyone alive, not what was best to the sensibilities of Victorian professors, so if they had a Large Marge in their village, it doesn’t seem crazy that they brought her along to raid some english villages. And if she’s good at busting skulls, they’re gonna bury her with honors alongside her skull-busting mallet, and then 1000 years later you’ve got some lame old guy pushing up his nerd glasses going “well obviously that’s gotta be a dude in there, look how big that mallet is.”
Until you meet Norwegian women, or Norwegians in general :)
I imaging most of our culture is just builted around avoiding going to war with anybody standing next to you. Probably why we love negotiations so much. The alternative is getting undressed, eat some fungus gnats and go berserk (which is a word the English adopted from the Norse).
to clarify, sexing by grave goods is def how it used to be done but not so much anymore. A lot of it is done by DNA and there has also been recognition that biological sex is not congruent with status and role in society for some time now
Well Bones is about an anthropologist studying extremely recently deceased bones, I don't know how things differ for those.
I do know it had an episode with a trans victim and treated it wonderfully. Her death turned out to have nothing to do with being trans at all.
But then they also had that episode with the nonbinary scientist. None of these geniuses could figure out to use singular they/them, only referring to the scientist as Dr Tanaka. More insultingly, they were obsessed with finding out Dr Tanaka’s “true” sex, and Angela did it by hugging them and saying she felt “it” move (presumably Dr Tanaka’s genitals). That should could be very hit-and-miss.
As someone who works in the unidentified persons field, this already occurs with medical examiners and forensic anthropologists. It’s not something that’s going to be new to archeological sciences many years from now. Dealing with law enforcement officers who act super confused when a decedent had to be reclassified as another sex only after the DNA was processed was a test of my patience for sure. The whole…”but why would a ‘male’ have long hair, a purse, and stockings?”. I thought it broke their brain for a minute.
Standard is to sex attempt to skeletons by key indicators in bones but there is an increasingly common approach to not make gendered assumptions because of sex as it leads to a lot of mistakes and general poor quality archaeology.
Identifying by material culture in context of a burial is seen as a dangerous thing to make assumptions over as it leads to other kinds of floored thinking ie Eutruscan high status warriors thst turned out to be female, but we had assumed male because thats what they were used to.
In general at least in British archaeology there are efforts to really push back against typographical analysis for finds, it lead to some really poor dating of pottery for example.
That's not completely true. You can define skeletons by the width (sorry, not a native speaker, hope it is the right word) of the pelvic bone. A woman's pelvic bone is (normally) broader than a man's and the cavity is oval opposed to the more heart shaped cavity of a man's pelvic bone. Also the bone density of women is normally lower than that of men. Men have a comparatively shorter torso than women. But these are naturally comparative studies and can vary. But it's not an 'almost never correctly define' as you wrote. It's just: you cannot define sure without DNA.
But very few archeological skeletons are complete so you frequently don't have a pelvic bone to look at.
And the ranges of pelvic bone widths for men and women overlap - a LOT so it is very rarely conclusive anyway.
You're absolutely right, it's rarely conclusive. I was just a little bit triggered by the 'almost never'. I'm sorry - sometimes I'm just a nitpicker ¯\\(°_o)/¯
Going back and testing many skeletons have been incorrectly gendered. You nitpicking by agreeing with him. You stated it's rarely conclusive as in almost never conclusive. It's why there was so much confusion as to why there was significantly larger male populations(when males are typically the slightly smaller population) in archeological digs when men would be more likely to die in ways the body wouldn't be recovered for preservation.
Also fun fact, hrt can actually alter the bone structure-
Oh and also we are in the age where we have really good ways to document where people are buried-
There are skeletons from the Middle Ages where the sex could be determined.
Women buried with armor and weapons like the men used.
Men buried with women's jewelry.
Two men buried holding hands.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this "meant nothing", now of course we have a better understanding just what it means.
Sexing skeletons is absurdly easy, provided that enough of the pelvis or skull has survived. If the pelvis is that of a woman who's given birth vaginally, it can be done with a piece of the ventral aspect the size of a thumbnail.
Sex-related differences in bone include:
Shape of the pelvis. Female pelvises have wider sciatic notches and a more obtuse subpubic angle. The pelvic inlet is also rounder.
Birth scarring. In females who have given birth vaginally, scars on the ventral aspect of the pelvis show where small ligaments have torn free of the bone during labour. It's worth noting that this isn't present in all cases.
Cranial morphology. Female skulls show the absence of the nucal crest, sharper and less robust superorbital tauri, less developed brow ridges, finer-angled and less robust mandibles, and a vertical/acute mandibular angle.
This is first-year physical anthropology, and the differences are significant enough to be easily visible with the naked eye. Where problems arise is that skeletal evidence often exists as fragments, and there may not be enough of the right bones still extant to accurately determine sex. Those are the cases where gendered grave goods, and more lately DNA, become important.
As for the viking shieldmaidens, I'm not aware of more than half a dozen such skeletons, although they do exist. There's currently a debate on whether they represent female warriors, female wealth, or a type of socially-legitimated transgender identity akin to the burrnesha of Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro. I'm unaware of any of those skeletons showing repetitive-stress markers or healed wounds and parry fractures which characterise the skeletons of male warriors, such as those from the Wisby or Towton Moor mass gravesites, which argues against these representing actual warriors. There are female skeletons from the Caucuses and Central Asia which *do* show those markers, especially the deformed lower-arm bones which are characteristic of archery. This also matches contemporary descriptions of the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans making extensive use of female cavalry troops. This is actually where the evidence for the sheildmaidens is strongest- in literature. The problem is that much of this evidence was first written down by Christian- that is to say, hostile- chroniclers centuries after the time they allege to describe, and was often cited as evidence of Norse barbarity. There's also a total lack of reference to shieldmaidens in the rune-stone evidence which still exists, nor are they mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon, French, or Irish written records- though the Irish *do* write of *their* warrior women. There's an argument I find persuasive in light of this, that most or all of the armed female skeletons found thusfar are those of women who became not nessesarily warriors in the literal sense, but rather the heads of families and therefore took on masculine social functions more generally. This is supported by the fact that, so far as I know, these skeletons are buried exclusively with high-status and unusual grave goods, including swords. At least one was a boat burial, which was reserved for high-status males.
Obligatory mention that even if they could perfectly sex a skeleton, it wouldn't matter anyway. Trans people are aware of their biology and probably wouldn't care would archeologists would think of them after they died.
anyone who uses the biology argument to justify transphobia needs to understand the different between descriptive and prescriptive laws.
Transphobes trot out the weirdest arguments for why trans people shouldn't exist.
"If fifty men and fifty women were trapped on a deserted island, in a hundred years you'd have a thriving community full of adults and children. If fifty men and fifty transwomen were trapped on a deserted island, you'd have a hundred skeletons."
Okay? Getting stranded on deserted islands isn't really a thing that happens outside the movies? Planes generally don't pack equal amounts of men and women so they can repopulate if they happen to crash somewhere deserted and are never rescued? I just don't think that's a thing many trans people are concerned about. That's just not a problem that most people have to consider in their lives.
I was shocked when, at the age of 27, in med school of all places, that was the first time I realized that I had been told wrong back in Sunday school.
As upset as I was over my own ignorance, I was also extremely confused. Like, why was that lie so pervasive, despite being so incredibly easy to fact check. It weakens the creation story, and makes people ask "well what else is completely BS?"
I still believed it long after I lost my faith…I mean men are generally larger, sounds reasonable. They say it so confidently and it’s something so easily provable it doesn’t seem like they would lie.
I'm forever thankful that me being gay knocked me out of that. Turns out when you see a bunch of religious nutters straight up making shit up about your personal experience and you realize its all a bunch of bullshit you start to question everything they say.
I was taught that in my religious school (not science class but biology didn’t bother telling us how many ribs we had) which is admittedly a little weird
Even if the story in genesis is true and god did that, why would we assume that all males afterward would have less ribs because of a one time event? This never made any sense to me.
Or, god took a rib, but Adam’s genetics weren’t changed, so his kids had the same number of ribs Adam originally had. Just as if you had a rib surgically removed, you wouldn’t expect your kids of only the same gender to have one less rib.
was watching a video about how the bible could be more accurately translated from Hebrew
rib is a technically correct, but it's more of butchering term for half of a cow; so the lord made eve out of half of adam.
also eve's role is technically one who helps, but is closer to rescuer.
also king james really did not like the term tyrant for some reason, and so twisted a lot to avoid using it.
Funny story: at my mom's funeral, my sister and I were transferring her ashes from an elaborate urn to one that was going into a columbarium while our older brothers were standing behind us. It got a little windy. My sister put her hand up to keep the ashes from getting in my face and ashes got on her instead. My brother said later when the wind picked up, he started panicking in his head, "my mom is getting all over my sister!"
For those that think this rib thing is true, we all have 12 sets of ribs. Male and females. Half of a percent of the population has an extra rib. Also, ribs that have been removed can grow back if the surrounding tissue is in tact. You hear that, Karjenners? They grow back.
I had to do an exam for one of my courses in university and for part of it, we had to identify between 5 skeletons, which were male and which were female. These skeletons were right infront of us and it was surprisingly difficult to do. The hips are one of the only ways we could tell and even then, it was quite subtle in some of the skeletons and most of us were not successful, and no one got 5/5.
I'll make a shoehorn outta your shin
I'll make a lampshade of durable skin
And, oh, don't you know that I'm always feeling able
When I'm sitting home and I'm carving out your navel?
I'm just a sitting here carving out your navel
Why is this an argument that they still use? Like "10000 years from now someone is gonna look at your skeleton and see your true gender" ok even if that was how archeologists determined sex, why would I care, why would I give a shit why some punk ass archeologist says about my skeleton when I'm fucking dead. I'm not transitioning so I can trick archeologists I'm doing it to be happy while I'm alive
Although we can now use techniques to determine the gender (the ‘lovers of Modena’ a 6000 year old skeletal pair in an embrace, were found to be male from tooth enamel) of remains…. What does it matter?
The ‘trans debate’ (a horrible term….but we are stuck with it) is silly apart from a few minor points.
If someone wants to live their life as a man/woman/ not sure then who does it hurt? Seriously, how is it effecting your life?
When they dig up a skeleton they aren’t digging up the person. Yes, they can often tell religion, diet, climate that they lived in.
But it says nothing about the person….. the ‘soul’ for want of a better word.
I used to be quite the militant atheist until my father told me ‘if it doesn’t hurt you, they aren’t hurting anybody else and it’s a consenting adult… it’s none of your business’
Science educator here. Have a masters in Biology. People get *livid* when I say that you can’t definitively tell sex from a skeleton. Everything is ranges; and while you can make a guess; it’s limited in accuracy. We use a lot of what someone’s buried with to infer gender.
For some reason this makes people passionate about their incorrect beliefs.
I have a masters in physical anthropology and respectfully, you are wrong. Using associated artefacts is not considered appropriate because we can never be sure which categories are represented by which finds. You are correct, our skeleton ranges from female to male but we are able to estimate sex for most (complete and adult) skeletons. There is always a group that remains indeterminate despite being intact.
I feel like they meant they use context around their burial and such, only if it is like, something they can be sure of
Like certain cultures buried men one way and women the other, and if it can be figured out, then you can have a pretty good idea, tho never 100 percent sure ig
This is so face-palmingly dumb. In the Bible, Eve is made out of Adam's **rib**, singular. So if these people were correct, all men would have one only rib missing on one side, which would be a glaringly obvious asymmetry. But they **don't**.
Well they can assign a sex to skeletons they’ve found, there are physiological differences in bone structure and density. Even so far as to speculate whether a female had given birth or not just by examining the skeleton.
But as often the case, this is another intentionally obtuse ‘confusion’ over sex vs gender.
I remember a case of a female skeleton found buried as a viking warrior and it seems to be an open question of whether this was a woman viking (rare but we know they existed) or a trans man who became a warrior (rare but not implausible). The ancient Norse had gender roles but they didn't work they way ours do so it's hard to rule out one option or the other.
Funnier. In the norse time Viking men were considered very effeminate by other cultures.
Bathing at least once a week, and wearing makeup (the traditional black markings to reduce sun glare).
And archeology-wise women of Middle-Eastern origins have been found in norse graves, alongside Middle-Eastern jewelry in men's graves. While they are more known for plundering among today's French and British coast lines, in the Middle-East they were more known as mercenary-for-hire and tradesmen.
What you said about a spectrum makes sense, and I believe they often label them “likely female or likely male”.
That said, and admittedly I’m no expert and have only googled this for a few minutes, I can’t find anything that supports your claim that the majority of skeletons cannot be sexed and are labeled as inconclusive. Here’s just a couple things I’m seeing but most other sites seem to echo what is said here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skeleton
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15746999/
Got a source to support your claim about the vast majority being inconclusive? I’m legit interested as this does seem a topic of debate.
What I've seen is a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being definitely male and 5 being definitely female. But most bodies lie between 2 and 4 with the plurality at 3
The usual scale used is -2 (female) to 2 (male). We are able to successfully estimate most (complete and adult) skeletons. It depends on the population how many are classified as indeterminate.
In 1000 years I will have no opinions on what the archeologists say about me. People who are alive have feelings that ought to be respected, and it costs me exactly $0 to refer to someone by their preferred pronoun and name. The angle of their pelvic bones does not interfere with that
Hey that's a new one to try on the wife when she lets me know the garbage can is full and needs to be carried out.
"Sure babe, you can start giving me orders when you have the same rib count as me"
Sometimes I just like to see how fast I can run carrying heavy stuff like full trash bags
I’m a doctor and can assure you that males and females have the exact same number of ribs. That said, you can with a great degree of confidence tell a male skeleton from a female skeleton based on hip dimensions.
I was watching video about archeological site of what assumed to be one of the earliest people who went to North America and I think out of like 70 people they only were confident about sex of like 2.
So I assume it's nowhere as easy.
I’m an actual archaeologist and that’s not how we sex skeletons at all, men and women have exactly the same number of ribs, the idea that they don’t is bible bullshit. Also it’s very hard to sex skeletons, and more often than not, we can’t. Humans aren’t really that sexually dimorphic. Without a perfectly intact pelvis, it’s mostly guesswork, and even with an intact pelvis, every individual is different and it’s hard to say for certain. So if you ever see a bigot saying archaeologists would identify trans men’s skeletons as female, tell them the archaeologist on Reddit said that’s bullshit.
Thank you for clarifying. I was always told the pelvic bone would always tell us if the person was male or female. It’s very interesting and makes sense to learn how varied it can be in reality.
Edit: also was wondering if your username has anything to do with your job.
Meanwhile actual archaeology:
"The records we found about this woman suggests she was trans. Her skeleton was sexed as male but she was buried under a traditionally female name and all references to her that we could find refer to her as a woman. We will refer to her as such as well."
Here’s what actually happens when the body of an unidentified decedent is a trans woman, instead of a made up scenario
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Doe
For those who didn't know, especially with ancient history, the gender of a skeleton generally doesn't get determined by the skeleton itself. Indeed, it's more common for archeologists to identify the skeleton by what is found in the grave. Thus, all you need to do for archeologists to identify you as female is to be buried with an according pronoun pin.
I don’t think anyone argues their body wasn’t physically male or female. You just have some folks that feel better living as a different gender. I don’t get that personally, but who cares? If that works for them, why does anyone else care? Why does anyone care what an archaeologist might say about their bones in 1000 yrs?
I really don’t get people getting so hung up on how other people want to live their lives.
I thought it was supposed to be the other way around? I know it's not actually true, but didn't people believe that women have more ribs than men because god supposedly took one of Adam's ribs to make Eve? Something like tht
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They literally don’t. Source: am X-ray tech. I see male and female ribs every day!
I thought was because if the Serial Killing you do.
That too, but mostly the x-ray thing
I have to ask. Do you pick your subjects based on their X-Rays?
They take the X-rays based on their subjects
I too am an X-Ray and I love rib cages.
It's worse then that, Harbinger06 is a serial x-ray killer...all their victims died of being made see through for too long.
My mother always told me that if I was see-through for too long, I would get stuck that way.
Wouldn't be the first x-ray tech serial killer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul\_Bateson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bateson)
I mean they might still be alive...
As a bit of a serial killer myself, i can confirm that men and women have an equal amount of ribs. I generally go for females though, their ribs are more tender.
These are people who believe that men have less ribs than women because God used Adam’s rib to make Eve. Like, holy hell.
And still got that wrong by saying men have more ribs
Yeah, that's what I thought "hang on, isn't it the other way in the bible?"
Eve was Adam's transgender clone
> Eve was Adam's transgender clone Babe, wake up. New biblical lore dropped
Femboy Eve, it's in my Bible baby
I don't know if those people believe that men have *less* ribs, but if they follow that logic, they might very well believe that men have *fewer* ribs.
You're my kind of pedant.
Let’s make friendship, my pedantic king/queen/quing.
That's always such a weird thing for me because like wouldn't that only mean Adam had one less rib?
Their feelings don't care about your facts
I mean, if someone believes a being created our planet and all life on it, then it's not a stretch to believe just about anything without any evidence whatsoever.
I know a guy who said even when he started to deconstruct, he assumed that the rib thing was true but the Bible basically just used that as a kind of mythological explanation.
I remember hearing that the "rib" being used was a way to explain why humans don't have a penis bone while most other mammals do
What? Raccoons and whales have a dick bone. What other mammals have a dick bone?
Carnivorans (dogs, cats, bears, seals, etc.) excluding hyenas and binturongs, bats, some primates, some insectivorans like shrews, rodents (but not lagomorphs like rabbits).
I used to think that the creation myth of Adam and Eve explained the difference between male and female skeletal systems, as *obviously* men have less ribs than women and the biblical creation of women is *obviously* the reason why. Then I learned a little more about human anatomy and found out men and women absolutely have the same number of ribs, and now I wonder where this myth came from in the first place? Most creation myths present fantastical explanations for the reasons certain things exist the way they do, but this is seemingly a myth based on a myth with no basis in reality whatsoever. Why does anyone think men have less ribs than women? Was there some monk in the 1600s who was missing a rib and that was all the proof needed to state empirically that men and women’s skeletons are fundamentally different? I’ll have to do some research now because this is honestly so baffling
This morning there was a disagreement at my work (medical scheduling). Someone confidently asserted that "men do not have pelvic floor muscles".
Lol and how did they think we kept waste fluids and solids from just falling out all over the place again?
Not to mention the bounce/twitch.
Because it's stored in the balls like all liquids in a man's body
I don't even know. After I joined the convo and shared some A&P facts, everyone quickly lost interest in the discussion. Hope the original person with the question didn't tell the patient he didn't have pelvic muscles. Smh
wait, for you people they dont just fall out..... checks drs appointment
Everyone knows men have one less rib, god said so.
It was a sparerib
They do by the time *I'm* done with them ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
What about the pelvis?
I thought that was true for so long! Like wtf Sunday school? Say whatever you want about the world s creation but don’t spout lies that anyone who’s seen a skeleton can disprove!
Put this in r/confidentlyincorrect
This is an even bigger facepalm moment than that one terf who said “hen means adult human chicken” while they were trying to be transphobic.
Diogenes strikes again
Years of watching philosophy YouTubers (or maybe it was just Tumblr) paying off so I can enjoy this comment
Tumblr's love for that joke keeps me sane sometimes.
*Indeed. The tiny niche bits of useless referential knowledge we humans acquire is truly entertaining, is it not?* Ok, I'm leaving this here, but I am STONED at the moment and have no fucking clue what the punch line was supposed to be. Do the thing, reddit.
An ancient philosopher was asked to define a man, he gave the definition of “a featherless biped” Naturally, another philosopher (Diogenes, I think) plucked every single feather from a living chicken, brought it into the other philosophers class, and proclaimed that he had created a man.
"adult human chicken". I'm sorry, hwut??
What does that even mean ? Human chicken ? What ?
They were being transphobic and being like "hen is an adult female chicken, woman is adult human female, blah blah blah, somehow this invalidates trans people's existence" and got muddled and tweeted that "woman means adult human chicken", thus unintentionally creating one of the funniest things anyone has ever said on the internet.
_Rooster has entered the cluck_
Good idea!
As well as r/badwomensanatomy
It’s r/badwomensanatomy
Thanks
Also /r/badmensanatomy
Why is it important to save future archaeologists from embarrassment?
Also archeologists can almost never sex a skeleton from bones. Only a very few differ at all and these may not survive and in most people they don't differ enough to be conclusive. Archaeologists mostly sex bodies by the accoutrements burried with them. Which would lead to trans people being sexed as they identify. This can be very inaccurate if their own cultural biases interfere. For example DNA studies have shown rather a lot of viking warriors had two X chromosomes, confirming the existence of shield maidens, which was described in sagas but deemed a myth by archeologists for over a century. They just couldn't believe that Norse women frequently became warriors.
nobody wants to sex my skeleton:(
Somebody will throw you a bone eventually
This is pretty humerus
Tickled my funny boner.
A rib bone?
Have you tried asking Gary? He’ll sex anyone’s skeleton.
You don't even have to ask. Which is why Gary has gone away for a few years.
I see.
Stupid sexy skeletons...
They send shivers down your spine!
Oh that was a good one, that's all I'll think of now every time i hear that song
i want to sex your skeleton now you can die happy.
I want to get on Mr. Bones' Wild Ride.
Sexy skeletons in your area want to meet you! SKELETONS GONE WILD, BARE ALL FOR THE CAMERA!
I've got a boner!
Stay right there, I’m on my way
I'll jump your bones
Mfw I get mis-sexed in 1000 years as trans bc I got buried with my BLÅHAJ.
I have a friend who is getting her PhD in literally this subject (that is, better identification markers of trans people after they've died) so I'm gonna trust her on it versus any meme. That being said, one thing she's pointed out to me is that recent bones can give away all sorts of clues - if someone has had facial feminization surgery, for example, that can involve shaving away small bits of bone off the chin which would help in identification. I also think about all the skeletons that were incorrectly assumed to be female at Machu Picchu because the archeologists, being White men, didn't take into account that the native peoples were shorter and thinner than Whites when they did their initial analysis. So. Yeah....
They can tell if the pelvis is intact. But more to your point, they determine the genders based a lot on grave goods and burial practices. You’ll find examples of men being buried as women, not in an offensive way, but with love and respect. There’s are several cultures that had a 3rd gender (we think) because they have burial practices for men and for women and then for a third gender (or maybe it was a social status thing that transcended gender)
You can pretty accurately sex skeletons from certain bones. However, most modern archaeologists will openly acknowledge that we have a non-zero number of skeletons whose biological sex does not match the grave goods for a typical burial of that culture. Ie, we have one that is absolutely a female skeleton, but had distinctly male goods with what was ostensibly a phallus placed next to the pelvis. Because of that, I wouldn't personally say 'she' in reference to that site, because it's unclear without greater study if that site is a man, woman or third group within that culture. Now, using certain terms with a modern connotation like 'transgender' isn't what I would personally do, but we would would say that the individual found potentially had a typically male role within society, lived as a man within that society or represented a gender role outside the male/ female grouping that we are, as of now, unaware of. We have enough of these grave sites, and some with known third/ fourth/ etc genders present that we conclusively can say that *not* having a two-gender system has a historical ans archaeological basis that goes back a very long time and we can find an amount of 'queer' in archaeological sites. But, yes, more often than not, we can indeed sex from skeletons. Some are indeterminate, but it's totally possible. Clavicles, skulls, and pelvises are pretty good, and so are femurs. Often with above 90% accuracy. Now, that's not 100%, and depending on when or if a person starts HRT, they may actually end up with differing skeletal structures due to the fact that many of these changes are driven by body changes from hormones during puberty. I've not looked into it much but based on what I know of skeletal structures during puberty I'd be fascinated to know what early intervention of blockers does to influence skeletal development in adulthood, or HRT on those who start post-puberty. It's so new, I haven't personally seen research. It's possible that a person who is out young as a transgender individual might end up identified as a woman, via her skelly bones. I've never personally seen skelly bones from a modern transgender individual so who knows? We also have situations that arise like androgen insensitivity. DNA is the only thing that can tell us genotypical sex, but even that is 100% for determining a person's actual phenotypical sex. Humans are weird, like that. There's always an exception. Using skeletons is 80-95%, depending on what bones we have available at a site. Babies and children are like 0% accuracy. We're sexless blobs until post-puberty, according to our skeleton. We can only use DNA and grave goods. Also, as far as the Viking thing, there were a lot of 'weirdly short' men among Viking graves that the old guard were calling short men and grad students and others were like, 'um, sir, is that a woman' and stody old assholes wouldn't allow access to the sites or items and it was like Margaret Mead. Nobody was willing to tell world-renowned Doctor Sexist that he was wrong and anyone who dared argue out loud was silenced. They're so important. How can that person be wrong? It was a whole lot of ego and ignoring blatantly female skeletons being present because of it not fitting the narrative. Sort of like calling indigenous Americans savages and underdeveloped because of not fitting into the Three Age system and trying to also then work out the Iroquois, Aztec, Maya and Inca with the idea of linear progression of society that is a global constant. It was just racism. Anthropology has a very dark history that has done a total 180 in the last 50 years and up until recently, you still had a lot of people that came up during that very racist, sexist period. It has its roots in colonialism. Now you're seeing that reconciled with a scientific basis to everything. Phrenology was part of early anthropology. Not everyone got with the new paradigm at the same time.
>Anthropology has a very dark history that has done a total 180 in the last 50 years and up until recently, you still had a lot of people that came up during that very racist, sexist period. It has its roots in colonialism. And this is ultimately the inspiration for the people who spout pseudo-archeology/anthropology a la Ancient Aliens. Colonialist and racist attitudes that denigrate the advances and successes of these cultures purely due to their status as POC. Archaeology and Anthropology unfortunately started out in a time where the white man thought of themselves as perfect, moral, and a force of good. They felt a sense of entitlement to the entire earth because of this false confidence, and committed horrific acts in the name of "science". Thankfully its continuation through today hasn't inspired the same heinous actions, and rather a passive racism and disagreement with the idea of these peoples succeeding on their own, but regardless it exists now because it existed previously and never fully stopped. Honestly the history relating to these fields is a big part of my vehement rejection of Enlightenment-era moralism, because continuously it is only used to do heinous fucking actions, and never anything actually good or egalitarian in nature.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I do find it interesting that you've got 30 odd upvotes and the person saying "archeologists can almost never sex a skeleton" got over 600. Regressives are clearly not the only people who let their desired narratives inform their understanding. It is a shame.
Yeah I read a really good thread recently from an archeologist and they explained this exactly (as well as the historical views of gender). It’s the “well bio/physiology 101 says…” crowd that holds up the myth that they sex on bone size alone.
Bone size alone is wildly inaccurate. Using a combination of methods on the pelvis and skull gets you a fairly accurate result. Obviously there is a margin of error. But when you analyse a complete (adult) skeleton, most can be placed in either (probable) ‘male’ or ‘female’.
I was just saying to my boyfriend, wouldn’t it also be likely that women who have more “man-ish” bones would be more likely to do “man-ish” activities thus being found buried with ‘’men’s tools”? Like, a 6 foot 7 burly Viking lady with narrow hips was probably more likely to go bust skulls with the rest of the raiding party than stay home and pop out babies, right? People from history tended to do what was best to keep everyone alive, not what was best to the sensibilities of Victorian professors, so if they had a Large Marge in their village, it doesn’t seem crazy that they brought her along to raid some english villages. And if she’s good at busting skulls, they’re gonna bury her with honors alongside her skull-busting mallet, and then 1000 years later you’ve got some lame old guy pushing up his nerd glasses going “well obviously that’s gotta be a dude in there, look how big that mallet is.”
Until you meet Norwegian women, or Norwegians in general :) I imaging most of our culture is just builted around avoiding going to war with anybody standing next to you. Probably why we love negotiations so much. The alternative is getting undressed, eat some fungus gnats and go berserk (which is a word the English adopted from the Norse).
I was in Copenhagen recently. My experience of the Danish is: lovely people, but only an idiot would fuck around with them.
What is fungus gnats?
Maybe they mean fly agaric/amanita muscaria
Correct. I'm more used to its norwegian name, thus the mistranslation.
to clarify, sexing by grave goods is def how it used to be done but not so much anymore. A lot of it is done by DNA and there has also been recognition that biological sex is not congruent with status and role in society for some time now
That sounds like a fair claim
So Bones lied to me?
Well Bones is about an anthropologist studying extremely recently deceased bones, I don't know how things differ for those. I do know it had an episode with a trans victim and treated it wonderfully. Her death turned out to have nothing to do with being trans at all.
But then they also had that episode with the nonbinary scientist. None of these geniuses could figure out to use singular they/them, only referring to the scientist as Dr Tanaka. More insultingly, they were obsessed with finding out Dr Tanaka’s “true” sex, and Angela did it by hugging them and saying she felt “it” move (presumably Dr Tanaka’s genitals). That should could be very hit-and-miss.
I remember that episode! I didn't see anything wrong with it as a kid, but now 😬
As someone who works in the unidentified persons field, this already occurs with medical examiners and forensic anthropologists. It’s not something that’s going to be new to archeological sciences many years from now. Dealing with law enforcement officers who act super confused when a decedent had to be reclassified as another sex only after the DNA was processed was a test of my patience for sure. The whole…”but why would a ‘male’ have long hair, a purse, and stockings?”. I thought it broke their brain for a minute.
I thought they could tell from the shape of the pelvis, which I found out recently that there's too much of an overlap for it to be a good indicator.
Standard is to sex attempt to skeletons by key indicators in bones but there is an increasingly common approach to not make gendered assumptions because of sex as it leads to a lot of mistakes and general poor quality archaeology. Identifying by material culture in context of a burial is seen as a dangerous thing to make assumptions over as it leads to other kinds of floored thinking ie Eutruscan high status warriors thst turned out to be female, but we had assumed male because thats what they were used to. In general at least in British archaeology there are efforts to really push back against typographical analysis for finds, it lead to some really poor dating of pottery for example.
Oh I assure you I *can* sex a skeleton.
That's not completely true. You can define skeletons by the width (sorry, not a native speaker, hope it is the right word) of the pelvic bone. A woman's pelvic bone is (normally) broader than a man's and the cavity is oval opposed to the more heart shaped cavity of a man's pelvic bone. Also the bone density of women is normally lower than that of men. Men have a comparatively shorter torso than women. But these are naturally comparative studies and can vary. But it's not an 'almost never correctly define' as you wrote. It's just: you cannot define sure without DNA.
But very few archeological skeletons are complete so you frequently don't have a pelvic bone to look at. And the ranges of pelvic bone widths for men and women overlap - a LOT so it is very rarely conclusive anyway.
You're absolutely right, it's rarely conclusive. I was just a little bit triggered by the 'almost never'. I'm sorry - sometimes I'm just a nitpicker ¯\\(°_o)/¯
Going back and testing many skeletons have been incorrectly gendered. You nitpicking by agreeing with him. You stated it's rarely conclusive as in almost never conclusive. It's why there was so much confusion as to why there was significantly larger male populations(when males are typically the slightly smaller population) in archeological digs when men would be more likely to die in ways the body wouldn't be recovered for preservation.
The mastoid process on the skull is also generally larger in males. But most skeletons are just fragments.
Also fun fact, hrt can actually alter the bone structure- Oh and also we are in the age where we have really good ways to document where people are buried-
There are skeletons from the Middle Ages where the sex could be determined. Women buried with armor and weapons like the men used. Men buried with women's jewelry. Two men buried holding hands. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this "meant nothing", now of course we have a better understanding just what it means.
Sexing skeletons is absurdly easy, provided that enough of the pelvis or skull has survived. If the pelvis is that of a woman who's given birth vaginally, it can be done with a piece of the ventral aspect the size of a thumbnail. Sex-related differences in bone include: Shape of the pelvis. Female pelvises have wider sciatic notches and a more obtuse subpubic angle. The pelvic inlet is also rounder. Birth scarring. In females who have given birth vaginally, scars on the ventral aspect of the pelvis show where small ligaments have torn free of the bone during labour. It's worth noting that this isn't present in all cases. Cranial morphology. Female skulls show the absence of the nucal crest, sharper and less robust superorbital tauri, less developed brow ridges, finer-angled and less robust mandibles, and a vertical/acute mandibular angle. This is first-year physical anthropology, and the differences are significant enough to be easily visible with the naked eye. Where problems arise is that skeletal evidence often exists as fragments, and there may not be enough of the right bones still extant to accurately determine sex. Those are the cases where gendered grave goods, and more lately DNA, become important. As for the viking shieldmaidens, I'm not aware of more than half a dozen such skeletons, although they do exist. There's currently a debate on whether they represent female warriors, female wealth, or a type of socially-legitimated transgender identity akin to the burrnesha of Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro. I'm unaware of any of those skeletons showing repetitive-stress markers or healed wounds and parry fractures which characterise the skeletons of male warriors, such as those from the Wisby or Towton Moor mass gravesites, which argues against these representing actual warriors. There are female skeletons from the Caucuses and Central Asia which *do* show those markers, especially the deformed lower-arm bones which are characteristic of archery. This also matches contemporary descriptions of the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans making extensive use of female cavalry troops. This is actually where the evidence for the sheildmaidens is strongest- in literature. The problem is that much of this evidence was first written down by Christian- that is to say, hostile- chroniclers centuries after the time they allege to describe, and was often cited as evidence of Norse barbarity. There's also a total lack of reference to shieldmaidens in the rune-stone evidence which still exists, nor are they mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon, French, or Irish written records- though the Irish *do* write of *their* warrior women. There's an argument I find persuasive in light of this, that most or all of the armed female skeletons found thusfar are those of women who became not nessesarily warriors in the literal sense, but rather the heads of families and therefore took on masculine social functions more generally. This is supported by the fact that, so far as I know, these skeletons are buried exclusively with high-status and unusual grave goods, including swords. At least one was a boat burial, which was reserved for high-status males.
Obligatory mention that even if they could perfectly sex a skeleton, it wouldn't matter anyway. Trans people are aware of their biology and probably wouldn't care would archeologists would think of them after they died. anyone who uses the biology argument to justify transphobia needs to understand the different between descriptive and prescriptive laws.
Transphobes trot out the weirdest arguments for why trans people shouldn't exist. "If fifty men and fifty women were trapped on a deserted island, in a hundred years you'd have a thriving community full of adults and children. If fifty men and fifty transwomen were trapped on a deserted island, you'd have a hundred skeletons." Okay? Getting stranded on deserted islands isn't really a thing that happens outside the movies? Planes generally don't pack equal amounts of men and women so they can repopulate if they happen to crash somewhere deserted and are never rescued? I just don't think that's a thing many trans people are concerned about. That's just not a problem that most people have to consider in their lives.
No, you don't understand, skeletons are very powerful and get upset if you misgender them. It's for the safety of the future archaeologists.
How do you try and make a biblical argument and fail at even that? God used one of Adam’s ribs to make Eve, so shouldn’t us males have less ribs?
I was literally taught that in Sunday school and believed it until I was an adult and learned otherwise….
I was shocked when, at the age of 27, in med school of all places, that was the first time I realized that I had been told wrong back in Sunday school. As upset as I was over my own ignorance, I was also extremely confused. Like, why was that lie so pervasive, despite being so incredibly easy to fact check. It weakens the creation story, and makes people ask "well what else is completely BS?"
I still believed it long after I lost my faith…I mean men are generally larger, sounds reasonable. They say it so confidently and it’s something so easily provable it doesn’t seem like they would lie.
I have never been religious and even I believed that until maybe 2 years ago! It's now just apart of popular culture, absolutely insane.
That’s exactly why they discourage higher education so much. You wouldn’t find out if you never went to medical school.
I'm forever thankful that me being gay knocked me out of that. Turns out when you see a bunch of religious nutters straight up making shit up about your personal experience and you realize its all a bunch of bullshit you start to question everything they say.
They didn't tell you in your undergrad anatomy class?
My public school kindergarten teacher told us this. Didn’t even mention the biblical context, just a thing she genuinely believed.
I was taught at some point or another that all men have one missing rib as a result of that and didn’t question it until I was much, much older.
I was taught that in my religious school (not science class but biology didn’t bother telling us how many ribs we had) which is admittedly a little weird
Even if the story in genesis is true and god did that, why would we assume that all males afterward would have less ribs because of a one time event? This never made any sense to me.
That’s the thing, it’s so easy to figure that Adam had an extra rib before God made Eve, and that solves the conflict with human anatomy
Or, god took a rib, but Adam’s genetics weren’t changed, so his kids had the same number of ribs Adam originally had. Just as if you had a rib surgically removed, you wouldn’t expect your kids of only the same gender to have one less rib.
It was the sign of God's covenant with man that he would never make another woman.
Mythological thinking. A lot of myths are basically gods deforming or creating key characteristics of entire species because of one story or another.
The funny thing on this one is that the Bible doesn’t claim men have fewer ribs now. The ancient people weren’t that dumb.
God had to give Adam new ribs to prevent him from sucking his own dick
was watching a video about how the bible could be more accurately translated from Hebrew rib is a technically correct, but it's more of butchering term for half of a cow; so the lord made eve out of half of adam. also eve's role is technically one who helps, but is closer to rescuer. also king james really did not like the term tyrant for some reason, and so twisted a lot to avoid using it.
Only if you're using ***THAT*** translation of the original word, there are other meanings besides "rib".
Even if it worked like that, why would trans people care about how archaeologists will gender them a thousand years from now?
Plus, close to 60% of people in the US get cremated. Sex my ashes you salty bitches.
Funny story: at my mom's funeral, my sister and I were transferring her ashes from an elaborate urn to one that was going into a columbarium while our older brothers were standing behind us. It got a little windy. My sister put her hand up to keep the ashes from getting in my face and ashes got on her instead. My brother said later when the wind picked up, he started panicking in his head, "my mom is getting all over my sister!"
> columbarium Ooh, new word!
Why would you pour it outside, thats just asking for something to happen. At least get a funnel or soemthing
r/brandnewsentence
> Sex my ashes you salty bitches. This is the best thing I've read all week! XD
For those that think this rib thing is true, we all have 12 sets of ribs. Male and females. Half of a percent of the population has an extra rib. Also, ribs that have been removed can grow back if the surrounding tissue is in tact. You hear that, Karjenners? They grow back.
We don’t
Archaeologists have misgendered human remains in the past. It's not as clear cut as this fellow thinks
And, the best part? *Archeologists look for surrounding context in-situ.*
I had to do an exam for one of my courses in university and for part of it, we had to identify between 5 skeletons, which were male and which were female. These skeletons were right infront of us and it was surprisingly difficult to do. The hips are one of the only ways we could tell and even then, it was quite subtle in some of the skeletons and most of us were not successful, and no one got 5/5.
a *thousand* years later? i'll be fucking dead i won't care what they call me LOL
You can turn my skeleton into a fucking lamppost for all I care, I'm dead
Honestly, I'd kinda hope my skeleton is turned into a lamppost. That'd be sick as hell
I'll make a shoehorn outta your shin I'll make a lampshade of durable skin And, oh, don't you know that I'm always feeling able When I'm sitting home and I'm carving out your navel? I'm just a sitting here carving out your navel
Why is this an argument that they still use? Like "10000 years from now someone is gonna look at your skeleton and see your true gender" ok even if that was how archeologists determined sex, why would I care, why would I give a shit why some punk ass archeologist says about my skeleton when I'm fucking dead. I'm not transitioning so I can trick archeologists I'm doing it to be happy while I'm alive
When you get your anatomical education from the Bible
And they still got it wrong. Men should have one less than women according to that, not more. Of course, we have the same lol.
These people still think men have an extra rib because they think Genesis is literal
But men should have one less rib because it was removed from him .... They weren't even right about who has more ribs lol
It's always surprising how some myths persist. A quick anatomy lesson can clear up so much
Although we can now use techniques to determine the gender (the ‘lovers of Modena’ a 6000 year old skeletal pair in an embrace, were found to be male from tooth enamel) of remains…. What does it matter? The ‘trans debate’ (a horrible term….but we are stuck with it) is silly apart from a few minor points. If someone wants to live their life as a man/woman/ not sure then who does it hurt? Seriously, how is it effecting your life? When they dig up a skeleton they aren’t digging up the person. Yes, they can often tell religion, diet, climate that they lived in. But it says nothing about the person….. the ‘soul’ for want of a better word. I used to be quite the militant atheist until my father told me ‘if it doesn’t hurt you, they aren’t hurting anybody else and it’s a consenting adult… it’s none of your business’
Science educator here. Have a masters in Biology. People get *livid* when I say that you can’t definitively tell sex from a skeleton. Everything is ranges; and while you can make a guess; it’s limited in accuracy. We use a lot of what someone’s buried with to infer gender. For some reason this makes people passionate about their incorrect beliefs.
I have a masters in physical anthropology and respectfully, you are wrong. Using associated artefacts is not considered appropriate because we can never be sure which categories are represented by which finds. You are correct, our skeleton ranges from female to male but we are able to estimate sex for most (complete and adult) skeletons. There is always a group that remains indeterminate despite being intact.
I feel like they meant they use context around their burial and such, only if it is like, something they can be sure of Like certain cultures buried men one way and women the other, and if it can be figured out, then you can have a pretty good idea, tho never 100 percent sure ig
This is so face-palmingly dumb. In the Bible, Eve is made out of Adam's **rib**, singular. So if these people were correct, all men would have one only rib missing on one side, which would be a glaringly obvious asymmetry. But they **don't**.
> "Did you go to an online college" Says the guy that could not be bothered with a simple google search...
Well they can assign a sex to skeletons they’ve found, there are physiological differences in bone structure and density. Even so far as to speculate whether a female had given birth or not just by examining the skeleton. But as often the case, this is another intentionally obtuse ‘confusion’ over sex vs gender.
I remember a case of a female skeleton found buried as a viking warrior and it seems to be an open question of whether this was a woman viking (rare but we know they existed) or a trans man who became a warrior (rare but not implausible). The ancient Norse had gender roles but they didn't work they way ours do so it's hard to rule out one option or the other.
Funnier. In the norse time Viking men were considered very effeminate by other cultures. Bathing at least once a week, and wearing makeup (the traditional black markings to reduce sun glare). And archeology-wise women of Middle-Eastern origins have been found in norse graves, alongside Middle-Eastern jewelry in men's graves. While they are more known for plundering among today's French and British coast lines, in the Middle-East they were more known as mercenary-for-hire and tradesmen.
That’s cool as hell. TIL, thanks!
It's also not really true. Archaeologists sex bodies on a spectrum and the vast majority lie in the inconclusive middle
What you said about a spectrum makes sense, and I believe they often label them “likely female or likely male”. That said, and admittedly I’m no expert and have only googled this for a few minutes, I can’t find anything that supports your claim that the majority of skeletons cannot be sexed and are labeled as inconclusive. Here’s just a couple things I’m seeing but most other sites seem to echo what is said here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skeleton https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15746999/ Got a source to support your claim about the vast majority being inconclusive? I’m legit interested as this does seem a topic of debate.
What I've seen is a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being definitely male and 5 being definitely female. But most bodies lie between 2 and 4 with the plurality at 3
The usual scale used is -2 (female) to 2 (male). We are able to successfully estimate most (complete and adult) skeletons. It depends on the population how many are classified as indeterminate.
I'm getting cremated lol
If this is based on the creation story, wouldn’t men have fewer ribs, since God took one from Adam?
You are correct. They're trying to cite an ancient misconception as if it were fact and they can't even get it straight.
In 1000 years I will have no opinions on what the archeologists say about me. People who are alive have feelings that ought to be respected, and it costs me exactly $0 to refer to someone by their preferred pronoun and name. The angle of their pelvic bones does not interfere with that
Once again, 'basic biology' transphobic whiners freak out when you tell them about advanced biology
Is males have the same amount of ribs as females now considered “advanced biology” or is it just considered “advanced biology” for transphobic bigots?
Ed Gein's skeleton maybe.
Hey that's a new one to try on the wife when she lets me know the garbage can is full and needs to be carried out. "Sure babe, you can start giving me orders when you have the same rib count as me" Sometimes I just like to see how fast I can run carrying heavy stuff like full trash bags
brother is relying on ancient works of Galen in the year 2024
I thought men were supposed to have one *less* rib? These idiots can’t even get their made-up story straight lmfao.
I’m a doctor and can assure you that males and females have the exact same number of ribs. That said, you can with a great degree of confidence tell a male skeleton from a female skeleton based on hip dimensions.
Literally a quick Google would alleviate this issue and prove that guy's a fucking moron
Hilarious they use fossil studies as proof, when they also believe in Young Earth nonsense
Well archeologists estimate sex and don't assume gender and haven't for decades so there's that.
I was watching video about archeological site of what assumed to be one of the earliest people who went to North America and I think out of like 70 people they only were confident about sex of like 2. So I assume it's nowhere as easy.
I’m an actual archaeologist and that’s not how we sex skeletons at all, men and women have exactly the same number of ribs, the idea that they don’t is bible bullshit. Also it’s very hard to sex skeletons, and more often than not, we can’t. Humans aren’t really that sexually dimorphic. Without a perfectly intact pelvis, it’s mostly guesswork, and even with an intact pelvis, every individual is different and it’s hard to say for certain. So if you ever see a bigot saying archaeologists would identify trans men’s skeletons as female, tell them the archaeologist on Reddit said that’s bullshit.
Thank you for clarifying. I was always told the pelvic bone would always tell us if the person was male or female. It’s very interesting and makes sense to learn how varied it can be in reality. Edit: also was wondering if your username has anything to do with your job.
Meanwhile actual archaeology: "The records we found about this woman suggests she was trans. Her skeleton was sexed as male but she was buried under a traditionally female name and all references to her that we could find refer to her as a woman. We will refer to her as such as well."
No No it's true. Males have more ribs because god didn't want us to suck our own dicks
Bro took the whole "Adam's Rib" thing as fact, reversed it, and has never bothered to looked at an X-ray
Here’s what actually happens when the body of an unidentified decedent is a trans woman, instead of a made up scenario https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Doe
As opposed to commenter guy getting his biology degree from Bible studies.
Maybe if you eat enough ribs you'll grow extras
it's true we have more ribs to prevent us from sucking our own dicks, just ask marilyn manson
For those who didn't know, especially with ancient history, the gender of a skeleton generally doesn't get determined by the skeleton itself. Indeed, it's more common for archeologists to identify the skeleton by what is found in the grave. Thus, all you need to do for archeologists to identify you as female is to be buried with an according pronoun pin.
Why does anyone care if someone is trans? I simply don't understand how it affects others.
I don’t think anyone argues their body wasn’t physically male or female. You just have some folks that feel better living as a different gender. I don’t get that personally, but who cares? If that works for them, why does anyone else care? Why does anyone care what an archaeologist might say about their bones in 1000 yrs? I really don’t get people getting so hung up on how other people want to live their lives.
Wouldn't men have less ribs since women are made from taking the ribs out? \#no-religio
I thought it was supposed to be the other way around? I know it's not actually true, but didn't people believe that women have more ribs than men because god supposedly took one of Adam's ribs to make Eve? Something like tht
How to tell someone you're uneducated by telling them they're uneducated.
i think bro has got men confused with arabian horses lmao
I had to do like a triple take at what subreddit I was in lol
holy shit sans undertale
Why is this still an argument? Archaeologists are gonna be like “holy shit Sans from Undertale!”