Woke warriors say identifying race of ancient human remains 'contributes to white supremacy'
A faction of LGBT activists within archeology is advocating against identifying skeletons as “male” or “female” as they cannot be sure how the deceased identified themselves when they were alive. A Quebec-based archeology student tweeted that archeologists should take into account the potential gender transitions of an individual. She reportedly lamented online that when the bones of a gender-transitioned person are found, they “can’t escape” their assigned sex.
“You might know the argument that the archeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex,” the student said. “Labeling remains ‘male’ or ‘female’ is rarely the end goal of any excavation, anyway,” she continued. “The ‘bioarchaeology of the individual’ is what we aim for, factoring in absolutely everything we discover about a person into a nuanced and open-ended biography of their life.”
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Woke warriors have also insisted that archaeologists no longer categorize the race of remains as this ‘contributes to white supremacy’. Critics said that such demands would lead to a rewriting of history and imposing current ideology ‘where it doesn’t belong’. Traditionally, when human remains are excavated, archaeologists determine traits such as age, gender and race using proven scientific methods such as bone structure and DNA analysis. This allows anthropologists and historians to learn more about the person and expand academic research.
However, ancient skeletons are increasingly being labeled as ‘non-binary’ or ‘gender-neutral’ by trendy academics. The Black Trowel Collective of American ‘anarchist archaeologists’, says "archaeologists must centre the fluidity of gender in their archaeological practice". The group’s manifesto on ‘trans liberation’ states "It is clear from archaeological, historical, and ethnographic accounts that human gender is highly variable and that human beings have historically been comfortable with a range of genders beyond modern “masculine” and “feminine” binaries."
According to Leading Britain's Conversation, Jeremy Black, emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter, said "It is an absurd proposition, as the difference between genders, just as the difference between religious, social and national groups, are key motors in history." He added, "This very ideological approach to knowledge means that we’re in danger of making knowledge itself simply a matter of political preference."
European researchers suggested last year that 1,000-year-old remains found in Finland belonged to a non-binary person because items around the bones, such as a sword, suggested the person was male, while jewellery suggested the remains were female. A US study earlier this year urged scientists to stop the ‘dangerous’ classifying of remains by race. The authors said ‘ancestry estimation contributes to white supremacy’ and ‘might actually hinder identification efforts because of entrenched racial biases’.
