Goettingen. Non-binary humans have been around since the Bronze Age. This is the conclusion reached by researchers at the University of Göttingen (Lower Saxony). In a large-scale study, they analyzed over 1,200 Bronze Age and Neolithic skeletons. Their results suggest that thousands of years ago there was a tolerated minority with a non-binary gender identity. With their publication, the scientists transferred a modern understanding of gender identities to archaeology.

Archaeological studies to date have mostly used a traditional binary sex model, in which corpses were assigned their Biological Sex based on the DNA in their bones. But there is also the concept of gender, which depends on one’s own gender identity and the perception of others. In archaeology, for example, jewelry is interpreted as a burial object for female individuals and weapons as an object for male persons.

Researchers study social and biological sex of skeletons

This interpretation does not always correspond to the DNA results. Therefore, Eleonore Pape from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Nicola Ialongo from the Department of Prehistory and Protohistory at the Georg August University and their team at the University of Göttingen measured how often the examined corpses were gendered and biologically sexed gender mismatch. The seven grave fields considered in Germany, Austria and Italy date from a period of about 7500 to 3200 years ago.

The scientists came to the conclusion that 90 percent of the identified individuals matched the biological and social sex. A completely new discovery for archaeologists, however, is the minority of 10 percent of individuals in whom both sex concepts do not match.

Researcher: There was a non-binary minority as early as the Bronze Age

They could be evidence that there was tolerance for non-binary people thousands of years ago. Because they were buried in a similar way to their contemporaries, but received grave goods that did not match their biological sex. “The numbers tell us that historically, we can’t think of non-binary people as exceptions to a rule,” said Pape, who co-led the project. A strong demarcation of masculinity and femininity and associated values ​​did not exist in prehistoric Europe.

However, the team’s findings are still questionable, as the researchers themselves admit: they point out that many of the skeletons could not be classified biologically because of their age and that further analysis of the prehistoric corpses based on the results of the study is necessary. According to Ialongo, they have not yet been able to determine “the actual magnitude” of the discovered minority.

Gender research is now a discipline in its own right

The study was published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. The two scientists carried out the research for the University of Göttingen. Eleonore Pape now works at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. Nicola Ialongo continues to work at the University’s Department of Prehistory and Protohistory.

In German usage, the distinction between biological sex and social sex sounds a bit complicated, but in English there are two different terms for it: “sex” and “gender”. Nowadays, gender studies is a separate department at many universities and gender-sensitive language and non-binary gender identities are used in everyday life by more and more people.

This article first appeared in the “Göttinger Tageblatt”.