The Burial Tableau of Dolní Vestonice

[Carnyx]

http://home.earthlink.net/~ekerilaz/dolni.html I thought revisionism was forbidden

The Burial Tableau of Dolní Vestonice

An unusual burial tableau may provide insight into the same-sex relationships of ancient Cro-Magnon peoples



Queer history in Europe begins around the year 25,640 B.C. At that time, human evolution was just "coming of age" - what had been a monotonous, global culture began to explode with rapid new advances in creativity and diversity - knives, sewing needles, fired ceramics, fish-hooks, lamps, textile weaving, rope-making, complex hearths and habitations - all appeared around this time, in what scientists call the Gravettian era. Europe was then in the midst of an ice age (the average daytime temperature in the "summers" of this ice age was probably around freezing), yet in a small valley in Moravia in the modern Czech Republic, now called Dolní Vestonice, a small group of Cro-Magnon which never exceeded perhaps 100 individuals managed to survive and thrive in this harsh climate for several thousand years. This particular group not only pioneered the first clay ceramics and kilns ever discovered, but they also had a highly developed social order, which allowed a unique and rather bizarre drama to unfold within its small circle.




[Fired ceramic heads of a rhino and a lioness found at Dolni Vestonice, and the reconstructed kiln used]

In 1986, archaeologists working in Dolní Vestonice came across three skeletons in one common burial, which in itself is not all that unusual. But nothing like this triple burial has ever been found, for the 28,000 year old burial itself is in fact a tableau mort in which the corpses were deliberately arranged by this community to tell an enigmatic and fascinating story. The three men in this shallow grave were all about 18-20 years of age at the time of death - the two outer bodies were certainly robust young men - but most experts feel that the body in the center is of undetermined sex, although probably a tall but light-boned male or perhaps an intersexed person. Because of a severe congenital disability, the hips (which usually tell us the biological sex of an individual) are malformed and of indeterminate sex. However pelvic-bone expert Dr. Karen Rosenberg of the University of Vermont has claimed with certainty that, based on her examination of the pelvic area of the central body, it is indeed a young male. In an e-mail that Dr. Rosenberg sent to me on September 7, 2000, she wrote,

"My work showed that all three are indeed male (and fairly young males at that). The one in the center is a little problematic (my friend and colleague Vladimir Novotny called it 'enigmatic' and I think he used the term 'intersexed'). This seems to come from a developmental pathology (a growth disorder of some sort). I think that Erik Trinkaus may have come up with a precise diagnosis of it, but I can't remember right now what it was. Certainly that individual was short, with some unusual proprtions and quite a bit of left/right asymmetry especially in the legs."

The young man in the center certainly lived in a lot of pain and was probably unable to walk well as his thigh bones were fused into his hip socket.







[Two views of the three young men buried together, clearly showing the sexual nature of the tableau, taken from http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6293/series/bk4moravia.htm ;
note that the upper photo shows the now-burnt stake protruding from the groin of the man on the left (aka "Bruce")]


CLICK HERE FOR A CLEAR SKETCH OF THE BURIAL SITE

The disabled young man in the center was buried first, then the young man on the right was laid down on top of him face down (which is entirely unique in burial practice as far as I know - we almost always bury our dead on their backs or on their sides, as if sleeping), and their arms were entwined intimately. However, the skull of the man on the right is turned away from his companion in the center, as if in shame. Found near the neck of the young man on the right were many wolf teeth, probably the remnants of a necklace he wore (and for this I call him Lobo). The central individual is looking at Lobo, his forehead covered with red ocher (a form of iron oxide, or more simply rust; transhistorically and cross-culturally a symbol of blood, life, and rebirth), and he had apparently been wearing a necklace of Arctic fox teeth (and thus I call him Wiley, after the wiliness of the fox).




[Necklace of red arctic fox teeth found at Dolni Vestonice, photo by J. Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man']

There is evidence that the young man on the left was still alive when he was placed into the grave site, impaled through the groin with a stake, and left to die. Once his body had gone beyond rigor mortis, the community arranged him so that he is looking down at the crotch of Wiley, and in fact both his hands are reaching into Wiley's pubic area. He also has red ocher all over his head and face (some think he was wearing a mask that had been painted with red ocher), and was wearing a necklace of human teeth. I call him Bruce.

Wiley in the middle also seems to have had a statue or some other carving or ceramic item made of red ocher placed in his groin or even inserted into his rectum, which has long since dissolved into crumbs. This could have been a red ocher dildo, a statuette of the Mother Goddess, a phallic baton, or some other ritual object, multiple examples of all these being found scattered in the hills of the Dolní Vestonice area.

While the sex of Wiley is noted by nearly every scholar as indeterminate or "enigmatic", all but Timothy Taylor have assigned a female gender to Wiley and then interpreted the grave tableau heterosexually (although Jean Auel, who used this as a pivotal scenario in The Plains of Passage from her "Earth's Children" series, leaves the gender of the middle person ambiguous); the scene is often described as that of "a young queen and two consorts", or a woman who died in childbirth, so her husband and the shaman who tried to save her were both killed. James Shreeves interprets the tableau heterosexually at length but then some 20 pages later makes the rather glib statement that "as fodder for romance, the burial has actually lost ground" in recent years because scholars now believe Wiley to have been male. Tellingly, Shreeves does not then reinterpret the burial scenario in this new light.




[Graphic A: artist's reconstruction of the Dolní Vestonice triple burial, erroneously depicting the middle person as a woman and failing to show the stake through the groin of "Bruce" on the left, taken from the cover of the German book "The Mammoth Hunters of Dolní Vestonice" - http://www.baselland.ch/docs/kultur/archaeologie/Pages/Publikationen/022.html;
Graphic B: my computer-generated reconstruction of the middle person as a man, and with the stake impaling "Bruce", sexualizing the scenario even more.]

A far more likely interpretation is that this burial tableau is a story of a same-sex relationship gone horribly wrong. It seems likely to me that Wiley and Lobo were lovers. [The wolf in later European tradition being symbolic of a sexual aggressor, or "top", even shows up in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood - a symbol of the hymen being consumed by the phallus dentatus. In addition, the fox has a long association in Europe with passive homosexuals because of its anthropomorphic wiliness, beguiling "smile", and liminal character who is neither fully wild nor fully domesticated. We will meet several other "foxes" in later columns.] Did Bruce (with his necklace of human teeth signifying a "man eater"?) rape, seduce, or even castrate Wiley, which so humiliated Wiley that he committed suicide, and in turn Wiley's lover, Lobo, killed himself in sorrow at the loss of his lover? Did the Dolní Vestonice community then execute Bruce in the grave of Lobo and Wiley as an eternal reminder of the consequences of this human tragedy?

Whatever our interpretation, this tableau tells us that very early in human history, complex sexual mores and taboos were firmly in place (prohibiting infidelity, or rape, or castration, but apparently not homosexuality - in fact this community seems to have valued this young male couple so profoundly as to ensure that their story be understood even millenia afterwards); and transgression of those communal rules brought about punishment in this emerging human sexual culture. This unique burial tableau also serves as a reminder that scientific "objectivity" is erroneous, and that heterosexism still prevails in the scientific community (giving us an inaccurate and skewed view of the human past).

For more information on this fascinating burial, see Timothy Taylor's The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture, and James Shreeves' The Neandertal Enigma: Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins.

[Menydh]

Sorry, but this looks like the queerie version of Kemp's MOTT. Redhair mummies and pennis touching mummies unite!

See my comment to your other post, which comes from the same source:
http://forum.stirpes.net/showthread.php?t=3827

[Carnyx]

Indeed, "the march of the Queers". How funny! I just googled it, looking for Lindow man's face reconstructed pictures. Parents should take away children from the internet before they turn into queers.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Is this mental masterbation, academic masterbation or just masterbation? These academics evidently have too much time on their hands and nothing to do. Evidently, they have never heard of that basic rule which says always be careful in interpeting behavior from mere artifacts of an extinct culture. That is how von Daeniken got spacemen from Aboriginal rock paintings.

[Menydh]

SW, there is no fault of academics here. The site belongs to a queer who has twisted and faked the reality to suit his agenda. A case of "kempism" to suit homosexual agenda.

See what this [normal] site has to say about the burial discovery:

The following is taken from James Shreeve's book The Neandertal Enigma: solving the mystery of modern human origins (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1995.)

In 1986, near a village called Dolni Vestonice in the Czech province of Moravia, the bodies of three teenagers were discovered in a common grave. A specialist was immediately summoned from Brno, some twenty-five miles to the north, and under his care the remains were exhumed and faint remnants of the youths' identities revealed. Two of the skeletons were heavily built males. By its slender proportions, the third was judged to be female, aged seventeen to twenty. A marked left curvature of the spine, along with several other skeletal abnormalities, suggested that she had been painfully crippled. The two males had died healthy, in the prime of their lives. The remains of a thick wooden pole thrust through the hip of one of them hinted that his death might not have been entirely natural.

The bodies had been buried with curious attention. According to the expert Bohuslav Klima, of the Czech Institute of Archaeology in Brno both young men had been laid to rest with their heads encircled with necklaces of pierced canine teeth and ivory; the one with the pole thrust up to his coccyx may also have been wearing some kind of painted mask. All three skulls were covered in red ocher. The most peculiar feature of the grave, however, was the arrangement of the deceased. Whoever committed the bodies to the ground extended them side by side, the woman between her two companions. The man on her left lay on his stomach, facing away from her but with his left arm linked with hers. The other male lay on his back, his head turned toward her. Both of his arms were reaching out, so that his hands rested on her pubis. The ground surrounding this intimate connection was splashed with red ocher.

The skeletons lean into each other, like nestled question marks. In his written report, Klima speculated that the arrangement of the grave might reflect "a real life drama which precipitated the burials." His drama revolved around a young woman who had died in childbirth. The two male skeletons where those of her husband and a medicine man-the man wearing the mask. Held responsible for her death, the men had been compelled to follow her into the afterlife.

http://donsmaps.com/tripleburial.html

Or better look at this report on the American Journal of Physical Anthropology:

Am J Phys Anthropol. 2001 Aug;115(4):372-9.


The Upper Paleolithic triple burial of Dolni Vestonice: pathology and funerary behavior.

Formicola V, Pontrandolfi A, Svoboda J.

Department of Ethology, Ecology, and Evolution, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy. vformi@discau.unipi.it

This work focuses on paleopathological analysis of one of the skeletons from the Gravettian triple burial of Dolni Vestonice (Moravia) and addresses issues of Upper Paleolithic funerary behavior. The burial includes the well-preserved skeletons of three young individuals. The skeleton in the middle (DV 15) is pathological and very problematic to sex; the other two (DV 13 and DV 14) are males and lie in an unusual position. The young age, the possibility of a simultaneous interment, and the position of the three specimens have given rise to speculations about the symbolic significance of this spectacular and intriguing funerary pattern. The pathological condition of the skeleton in the middle further emphasizes its peculiarity. Main pathological changes of the DV 15 skeleton include: asymmetric shortening of the right femur and of left forearm bones, bowing of the right femur, right humerus, and left radius, elongation of fibulae, dysplasias of the vertebral column, and very marked enamel hypoplasias. Scrutiny of the medical literature suggests that the most likely etiology is chondrodysplasia calcificans punctata (CCP) complicated by trauma and early fractures of the upper limbs. CCP is a rare inherited disorder characterized by stippled ossification of the epiphyses. The cartilaginous stippling is a transient phenomenon that disappears during infancy, leaving permanent deformities on affected bones. Among the different forms of CCP, the X-linked dominant form is that resulting in asymmetric shortening and is lethal during early infancy in males. Thus, survival of DV 15 until young adult age would require the specimen to be a female. Clinical findings often associated with the disease (erythemas, ichthyosis, alopecia, cataracts, and joint contractures, among others) would emphasize the singular aspect of this individual, pointing to a condition that should be carefully taken into account when speculating on the significance of that peculiar burial. Copyright 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Publication Types:

• Case Reports

PMID: 11471135 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Thanks Mynydd. Hating to digress into personal history, I actually have "sexed" many, many American Indian skeletons in school. This is an arbitrary thing. The angle of the pelvic notch is variable in both sexes so that a continuum is formed. Usually, the sharper the angle of this notch, the more you can assue it was a male. But, you must also look at the skull and long bones for signs of "masculinity". From the work you have posted, it is clear to me the middle individual was a female, with a great many osteological problems and that all three were buried "with honors" so to speak.