An intriguing find at an archaeological site in the Czech Republic has ignited a debate over whether a so-called "gay caveman" has been unearthed, more than 4,500 years after his death.
Czech archaeologists have found the skeletal remains of a man who was buried in Prague in the late Stone Age, sometime between 2,500 and 2,800 BC.
What is most interesting about the skeleton is the way it was left in the ground, buried in a style strictly reserved for females.
"From history and ethnology, we know that when a culture had strict burial rules they never made mistakes with these sort of things," researcher Kamila Remisova said at a recent press conference, according to a report on the Czech Position news website.
The archaeologists say the male was buried on his left side, with his head facing west.
This is the way that a woman would have been interred at the time and the direct opposite of the way that men were laid to rest.
Additionally, the archaeologists found an egg-shaped container alongside the body, another tradition that was followed with a female death. There was no sign of any of the typical objects that a male was buried with.
At the same press conference, researcher Katerina Semradova said the archaeologists believe the skeleton may well be "one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a 'transsexual' or ‘third gender grave' in the Czech Republic."
A report from the Daily Telegraph said that Remisova described the man likely having "a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual."
Semradova said there have been documented cases of women buried in the manner of men during this time period, but they were either warriors or witch doctors buried with additional funeral accessories.
News of the grave site find in Prague has spawned worldwide headlines that give the impression that the discovery of the skeleton is a historic event.
But not everyone thinks the media should jump to such broad conclusions.
Rosemary A. Joyce, a professor of archaeology at the University of California at Berkeley, said it is possible that the buried person may have had a gender that was not definitively male or female, or perhaps a body type that was outside normal expectations.
Writing on her personal blog, Joyce said it seems the Czech archaeologists have more accurately found "an anomalous burial" in a culture that typically buried its dead in one of two styles.
Joyce also disputes the use of the term "caveman" in media reports about the Prague skeleton, because it is simply not old enough to qualify for such a description.
The archaeologists do acknowledge that there are many things they don't know about the people living in the Czech Republic towards the end of the Stone Age.
Semradova said the Czech Republic would have been an agricultural society back then and its people would have originated from parts of Eastern Europe.
They would love to "talk to somebody who lived then, but it's not possible," Semradova told CTV.ca in a recent telephone interview from Prague.
