Blog entry 4- Gay Caveman?

Following the blog prompts I Googled " Gay Caveman", and what ensued was a trove of sensationalist articles from the media ranging from The Telegraph to Huffingtonpost which all cited different "facts" about the Corded Ware culture, in the site were the supposedly Gay Caveman hailed from ( currently located in the Czech Republic). Quoting two different websites to point out exactly how well the media interpreted the research and blew it out of proportion:

From LiveScience: "men were traditionally buried lying on their right side with their heads pointing towards the west, and women on their left sides with their heads pointing towards the east. Both sexes would be put into a crouching position." (http://www.livescience.com/13620-gay-caveman-story-overblown.html)

From The Telegraph : "Corded Ware males were usually buried on their right sides with their heads facing east. This man, however, was buried on his left with his head facing west — a traditionally female position."
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8433527/First-homosexual-caveman-found.html)

Different sites could not even agree on the traditionally accepted positioning for a male burial in the Corded Ware culture. Nor did they consider that the male hailed from a burial dated 2800-2500 B.C. which completely rules him out as being a "caveman". Misunderstandings of gender and sexual orientation aside, the Gay Caveman was not even a caveman.

The Telegraph at least quoted the original statement from the archaeologist that sparked the media furore : " "We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a 'transsexual' or 'third gender grave' in the Czech Republic," archaeologist Katerina Semradova told a press conference on Tuesday."
It serves to take note, that nowhere in this statement is the purported Gay Caveman's sexual orientation mentioned, therefore after all the explosion of articles with a little careful reading without even going into researching academic papers on the subject, one finds out the "Gay Caveman" is neither gay nor a caveman.

 We might never fully find out how that person was perceived in their community back in those days, but the least we can do is consider when coming accross mass media articles like this to read everything with a grain of salt, always look under the surface and have a little more interest in the true archaeology of death.