April 8, 2011

"I am just about to go crazy today. I just can't seem to escape the 'gay caveman' story."

Oh! The tribulations of paleoanthropology blogging. UW professor John Hawks must hit the ground running when news breaks from the Stone Bronze Age. The news folk are after him for an academic opinion and he says: "Dudes! I could be wrong, but I think that to have a 'gay caveman', you need a skeleton that is both gay and a caveman. And this ain't either!"

IN THE COMMENTS: Maguro said:
So it's probably not a gay caveman after all, merely a Bronze Age Bea Arthur.

What a letdown.
EDH said:
We have rare prehistoric video!

46 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, he's just an anti-science homophobe, because wouldn't it be great if cavemen were cool with homosexuality.

Scott M said...

This whole saga is sad in that the real gay cavemen are being overlooked.

Terrible.

Automatic_Wing said...

So it's probably not a gay caveman after all, merely a Bronze Age Bea Arthur.

What a letdown.

Lincolntf said...

You mean gratuitously superimposing social theory onto anthropology produced a big mash-up of myth and misinformation? Never woulda guessed it.

LordSomber said...

If straight cavemen dragged women by the hair, did gay cavemen do the same?

LordSomber said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Maguro -

Thanks for "Bronze Age Bea Arthur"

Anonymous said...

"Here lies Pat, longtime companion of Chris ..."

Phil 314 said...

You mean modern media (regardless of political bent) and science are a rough mix? I could not have guessed.

(PS one of my favorite medical sites regarding this issue is
Health News Review. Needless to say much of medical news is terrible.

LATEST BREAKTHROUGH IN CANCER TREATMENT!!!)

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)



Look folks, THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED….this IS a gay caveman, and you homophobic, anti-cave-dwelling DENIERS need to just shut UP!

Anonymous said...

Gays "in the closet"

Skeletons "in the closet"

Coincidence?

I think not....

reader_iam said...

Bronze Age Bea Arthur

So, for the rest of the day, I'm gonna get strange looks for randomly breaking out in uncontrollable laughter.

Gee, thanks, Maguro!

; )

LordSomber said...

Q: How do you piss off a Neanderthal?

A: Tell him that Homo Sapiens earns two more pieces of rock a week than he does.

Quaestor said...

No! No! No!

These are the remains of a troglodyke!

Quaestor said...

Bronze Age Bea Arthur

Impossible. There were no polyester double-knit pants suits in the Bronze Age.

Wince said...

We have rare prehistoric video!

coketown said...

Stories like this make me curious about what future archaeologists will think of us when they start digging around. I hope they have enough sense to not assume that all east-facing coffins contain homosexuals.

Triangle Man said...

superimposing social theory onto anthropology

This is an infinite regression.

chickelit said...

Well as long as people are linking cool caveman videos...

*Bissage said...
Excellent link, chickenlittle.

Truly excellent.

** stands up and kicks chair away from desk **

** gets all funky **

________
*original

Chuck66 said...

MSM and the gay rights crowd are obsessed with the gay thing. Read any big city daily and almost every day they run some kind of a gay story or two.

Chuck66 said...

You have to wonder if gay cavemen belted out show tunes.

Simon said...

None of it adds up, as I argued yesterday: even if the skeleton is definitively male (the key assumption that Hawks calls into question), the burial is susceptible of any number of interpretations, including but not limited to the possibilities that our understanding of that culture's burial rituals is flawed or incomplete, that the burial was an accident, aberration, or oversight. The only way you can possibly get to the conclusion advanced is by starting from that conclusion, firing a grapnel at any evidence from which it could possibly be deduced (no matter how many other possible interpretations and how likely they are), and claiming causality. It is the willful imposition of a modern idea on historical evidence that can't even begin to bear the weight, in pursuit of a meaningless cause that cheapens and degrades the participants. There's nothing wrong with being gay, but there's a lot wrong with being intellectually compromised by some perceived need arising from that ex ante commitment.

(A sidenote: We see the same problem of intellectual compromise—or perhaps "interest capture" is a better term—all the time in the Catholic Church. People who don't like the Church's teaching on birth control homosexuality, holy orders, and so on, but who are not capable of making the jump into admitted heresy, must find some way to reconcile their ex ante commitment to a certain result with the Church's contrary teaching. And the seemingly inevitable result is that they end up with a hopelessly distorted view of the magisterium. Why? Because instead of determining a theory of authority and applying it neutrally, they start with an overriding commitment—a result—and must build their theory of authority around that preset result, producing a warped and twisted simulacrum of the magisterium, distorted into "geometrical forms for which an Euclid could scarcely find a name" (Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness ch. 5 (1931).)

Matthew Noto said...

I have it on good authority that the only way to tell if it's a gay caveman or not is to determine if he was buried with a complete set of Liza Minelli CD's, and a feather boa.

Ann Althouse said...

Forget the gay caveman... where's Bissage? Is he buried somewhere with his head facing east and household objects nearby? It's time for him to get back, to the bloggers and commenters who love him... to get back and get funky.

traditionalguy said...

The next Academy Award will go to "Brokeback Cave", the story of two men discovering how to use their tools on more than sheep and women.

The Crack Emcee said...

Considering gays are just under 2% of the population, are we wasting our time paying them so much attention?

The Dude said...

Bissage is dead, has been dead for a long time. He is thoroughly and completely dead. Ask Trooper York.

WV: flamene - well, some of these you just can't make up.

bagoh20 said...

Why do you thing they call him Moe?

Quaestor said...

Short for Moses Horowitz?

Quaestor said...

He liked lawn care activities?

William said...

The rejection of the gay caveman thesis is as much homophilac (if there is such a word) as homophobic. The latent content of the opposition is that homosexuality is a function of civilization and not of primitivism. Without drapes and show tunes, there can be no homosexuality.....I don't know the orientation of this particular caveman, but I am almost certain that the dynamics of homosexuality are not dependent upon a high level of civilization.

Quaestor said...

Another possibility -- he was a legendary pimp with an unusually large stable of talent -- known on the street as Mo'Hoe Horowitz, later shortened to Moe?

Phil 314 said...

re 3 stooges:

-Well they are sleeping together.

-Obviously Republicans given all of their violence.

-IF Shemp and Curley were both on American Idol Curley would be voted out and Shemp would win.

-I'm shouting Caveman fraud Those aren't real cavemen!

Anonymous said...

Now that we've disposed of queer caveman, any evidence of caveman on Dino action?

Simon said...

[I posted this a few minutes ago and it appears that it was either spam filtered or deleted; supposing the former, I repost without the link, and apologize if it was the latter.]

None of it adds up, as I argued yesterday: even if the skeleton is definitively male (the key assumption that Hawks calls into question), the burial is susceptible of any number of interpretations, including but not limited to the possibilities that our understanding of that culture's burial rituals is flawed or incomplete, that the burial was an accident, aberration, or oversight. The only way you can possibly get to the conclusion advanced is by starting from that conclusion, firing a grapnel at any evidence from which it could possibly be deduced (no matter how many other possible interpretations and how likely they are), and claiming causality. It is the willful imposition of a modern idea on historical evidence that can't even begin to bear the weight, in pursuit of a meaningless cause that cheapens and degrades the participants. There's nothing wrong with being gay, but there's a lot wrong with being intellectually compromised by some perceived need arising from that ex ante commitment.

(A sidenote: We see the same problem of intellectual compromise—or perhaps "interest capture" is a better term—all the time in the Catholic Church. People who don't like the Church's teaching on birth control homosexuality, holy orders, and so on, but who are not capable of making the jump into admitted heresy, must find some way to reconcile their ex ante commitment to a certain result with the Church's contrary teaching. And the seemingly inevitable result is that they end up with a hopelessly distorted view of the magisterium. Why? Because instead of determining a theory of authority and applying it neutrally, they start with an overriding commitment—a result—and must build their theory of authority around that preset result, producing a warped and twisted simulacrum of the magisterium, distorted into "geometrical forms for which an Euclid could scarcely find a name" (Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness ch. 5 (1931).)

Freeman Hunt said...

Stories like this make me curious about what future archaeologists will think of us when they start digging around.

Way back in my high school world history class, we were assigned to write a paper as though 1000 years had passed, and we were archaeologists reporting the findings of a dig at our high school.

Anna said...

Dare I say it? Look its Kloppenburg's direct ancestor.

it seems some people have a non-hetero fixation/projection issue. Along with being scientifically illiterate. And they are allowed to write. Wow, so easy a caveman can do it. Or is that now a caveperson to avoid any sexist stereotyping?

Unknown said...

This is the comedy relief before New Meadia Meade dashes off on his next story:

What Public Sector Unionistas Do During the Shutdown.

DADvocate said...

There must have been gay cavemen. Who else would have painted those pretty pictures on the cave walls?

Anonymous said...

Way back in my high school world history class, we were assigned to write a paper as though 1000 years had passed, and we were archaeologists reporting the findings of a dig at our high school.


David Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries (1979): see his 41st-century archaeologist's take on a motel toilet seat--sanitized for your protection.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld said...

Meade turned you on to the Three Stooges video, didn't he? Didn't he?

Trooper York said...

I don't give a shit if they had a Bronze Age Bea Arthur, I just want to know if they have a Bronze Age Adreinne Barbeau!

Anonymous said...

Curly was totally gay. Someone once overheard him saying "Why, thoitanly!" to some guy in a public restroom. But you wingnuts will go to any lengths to airbrush that out of history.

Scott M said...

I just want to know if they have a Bronze Age Adreinne Barbeau!

I was about 10 when that came out. Fodder for, you know...

Wasn't the tag line for that poster, "In those days, you had to beat your meat before you ate it"?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Way back in my high school world history class, we were assigned to write a paper as though 1000 years had passed, and we were archaeologists reporting the findings of a dig at our high school.

Then you might like THIS book.

It is pretty funny. A very short illustrated book about the archaeology of an old mid century (last century)motel and the wild asumptions that they make.

bagoh20 said...

Does anybody really doubt that there were gay cavemen? Think about it: loin cloths, shirtless.