When archaeologists unearth a grave site, one of the things they want to determine is the gender of the person who was buried there. A 900-year-old burial in Finland, excavated in 1968, has flummoxed researchers for decades. The remains were dressed as a woman, but given a warrior's burial with a sword. Was this a female warrior, or had the grave originally contained both a man and a woman? A new DNA study may have the answer.
As NPR’s Xcaret Nuñez reports, the individual likely had a genetic condition called Klinefelter syndrome. While girls are typically born with two X chromosomes and boys with one X and one Y chromosome, people with Klinefleter syndrome have two X chromosomes and one Y. Generally, those affected have mostly male physical characteristics, but they may also experience low testosterone levels, undescended testes and enlarged breasts. Most are infertile.
“If the characteristics of the Klinefelter syndrome [had] been evident on the person, they might not have been considered strictly a female or a male in the early Middle Ages community,” says lead author Ulla Moilanen, an archaeologist at the University of Turku in Finland, in a statement.
Considering the grave contained clues that this was a high-status person, the study might give us a new view of Finnish Iron Age culture. Read more at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: The Finnish Heritage Agency)
#archaeology #DNA #NonBinary #IronAge #KlinefelterSyndrome #MiddleAges #sword
Reconstruction of the burial showing the position of the sword. Image: Veronika Paschenko
Objects found in the Suontaka grave: a) bronze-hilted sword, b) hiltless sword with silver inlays, c) two oval brooches with textile fragments, d) chain-bearer, e) sheathed knife, f) brooch, and g) sickle. Image: Finnish Heritage Agency.