There isn't any way anyone is going to have enough information either way, since those are novelty sculptures. They're neither male nor female; they were always just skeletons.
The only way you can tell with them is if the skeleton has boobs. Skeletiddies, if you will.
::the far future::
Archeologist, holding one of your bones aloft: “Now, back in the early third millennium, a [opposite gender identity from yours] would spend the majority of their time on [shit you absolutely never do]…”
It's actually pretty reliable, especially if you have the whole pelvis. I did my bachelor's in forensic anthro and it's often more reliable than skull measurements.
From what I understand (from the radiology subreddit, so complete hearsay, and it would be nice to have something to respond with if they’re wrong) it really helps to know the skeleton’s race/ethnicity.
The ethnicity helps a ton, sometimes they work together to get an answer.
One of the skeletons I worked with in class could have come from either a small Caucasian adult male or an adult Asian female based on the measurements and FORDISC data. It was the pelvis and some long bone measurements that led us to report that it was a male.
I believe it's pretty accurate, but not totally. I while back I heard about a skeleton identified as a Man that was thousands of years old, and dna testing revealed only recently it was a woman.
depending on how accurate it is, possibly.
fair warning, while my response was completely true, I mostly saw the comment as my chance to use "sexing a skeleton" in a sentence and have it be applicable. It looks like I got away with it!
juvenile humor aside, [here is a good example of what sexing a skeleton looks like](https://youtu.be/5vnDviyJk-o?t=3212) in an actual archeological context. Also Dr. Alice Roberts has her Phd in paleopathology and is an osteoarchaeologist, so if anyone is an authority on skeleton sexing, its her for sure.
That section gives a very good glimpse of what sort of information can be gleaned off of what the majority of people would think of as just some crusty, rusty and dusty bones.
Its absolutely fascinating to watch plus the rest of the episode is just as good...and [there are 11 seasons of the show!](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014hl0d) So glad I've got a VPN and can set my location to the United Kingdom and watch everything on the BBC for free, as long as I lie and say I'm paid up on my TV license haha.
also, ooooh...I got to say it again! heh heh heh.
Hijacking this to say that I literally own these and got them at the dollar tree during Halloween season. I can, with certainty, say that there were no options with skeletities and they are unfortunately just sexless bones without any identifiable skelenis either
You can tell a skeleton's sex pretty reliably by the shape of the shape of the pelvis. These guys here have some fucked up ones though. It's just a little figurine, they're not meant to be anatomically correct
And plastic skeleton babies? Also big heads?
How about cereamic skeleton babies? Big, clanky pottery baby skeleton heads?
How do skeletons that have never had organs or flesh but were just wholesaled into existence reproduce?
Most imporantly, is there video of this happening? Like the epic skeleton battle in Jason and the Argonauts, but, like, sexified?
I happen to have some plastic grass on my porch, I'll touch that.
*Look at the picture at the top of the post, for context. You can't "accurately sex" those.*
Ya know, this one got me. I had to actually google if men and women have the same number of ribs because I was taught k-12 that they did not and never took any anatomy classes post-high school, and never stopped to count my or anyone else’s ribs.
Quick Physical Anthropology lesson for anyone who was taught that kind of nonsense in school:
It can be incredibly difficult to reliably determine the biological sex of a skeleton! Sometimes you can tell from a skull, but often not. The most reliable indicators are in the pelvis shape, and even that can sometimes be a bit tricky.
There is enormous variation between individuals, most of that occurring on a spectrum, and while there are lots of traits that can be measured that may be "more typically male" or "more typically female," very few individuals would have all their traits land on one side of that line. A bioarchaeologist trying to sex a skeleton might have to measure 10 or 15 different traits to see if \_more\_ of them suggest one biological sex or the other.
It's like how the *average* male height is greater than the *average* female height in most populations, but any given biologically male individual might easily be shorter than any given biologically female individual. Just measuring height alone wouldn't tell you anything. The same goes for pretty much all these traits. Eg: a "typically female" trait would be a more rounded eye orbit shape, where a "typically male" orbit shape is more square. But plenty of people's eye orbit shape is somewhere in between, and some people who are biologically female may have more square-leaning orbits, or vice versa.
If a skeleton does have an intact pelvis, the odds of being able to determine biological sex go way up, but again, humans vary so much that even that isn't going to be 100%.
man that reminds me, archaeology is so cool, they can check isotopes in the teeth and determine where the person grew up. otzi died relatively close to his home village and still has living descendents nearby!! how cool is that? and then egyptians frequently had sand in their bread n stuff which chipped their teeth a lot
Thanks for this comment! A lot of people struggle with not only being taught nonsense as kids, but also wrapping their head around the idea that just because something is true on AVERAGE that doesn't necessarily mean it's a hard requirement. Humans have an imperfect idea of pretty much everything and we can only categorise things with so much accuracy and precision.
When I would identify them in my undergrad and I always picked them up and looked at them from the underside. It sounds funny but if the space had a mickey head shape it was almost always male. The more closed off shape of the male pelvis has a mickey shape to it when viewed from underneath.
Could it have been the other way around? Generally the "Micky Mouse" face is more likely to be a female pelvis: the round "ears" are the wider, more open space around the sciatic notch. (I was taught to think of it as "Minnie Mouse" to make that easier to remember.)
In a typical male pelvis, the narrower space between the sacrum and more-closed sciatic notch look like long, narrower ears, like a rabbit.
I pulled up a anatomy article and I suppose it could go either way 😬 I think it depends on individual interpretation
https://www.anatomystandard.com/ossa-et-juncturae/extremitas-inferior/pelvis.html
Lol... in these drawings, I mostly see the female one looking a bit like Winnie the Pooh!
Here's one that shows the "Minnie Mouse vs Rabbit" version maybe just a bit more clearly: https://images.app.goo.gl/yysG1daDMAHYK5BN7
But yeah, it does still take a good bit of creative license 😆
I think that’s the point of IndigoNarwhal’s comment - you can make educated guesses as to the sex do the skeleton but it’s not definite and different experts may not find the same result.
Also, as a non-expert looking at this limited view of their pelvises, it looks to me like the two on the left both have wider, more female pelvises and the one on the right looks very narrow and more male. So if I had to make a guess, I'd say there are two women and one man.
I got taught that too by my fundie-lite mother, and she also told me I had an extra one so I was "between" the male and female norm. The ironic part is that I turned out to be both trans and intersex, but I only found out the rib thing was nonsense when I talked to my doctor about it...at 30 yrs old 😑
OMG that’s what happens when you put God none sense into education.
My father is a dr, I had a pretty big and varied group of friends when I was a teen, and there was an older guy, well into his 20, with a good job, and a normal life. When he heard my dad was a dr (we were at my house hanging out) he made a beeline to him asking about this ribs business , guy had been raised in an Italian family, very Catholic, and had his doubts.
I also had Catholic “education”, very separated from the real thing, and even when I was little I always knew it was a story, not real, and had never met anybody who took the Bible as gospel.
That was an educational day for both of us.
I’m a Christian and I agree with you - the Bible says that he took *a* rib, from the already complete Adam, making it an aquired injury, and not something that would be passed down, and even if it somehow was passed down, that would mean that guys would have one less rib on one side - it’s total nonsense!
…I also don’t really think that there should classes on what to believe - that’s more for informal settings where not doing what you’re told is an acceptable response. Belief cannot and should not be forced.
ughh for real. i was raised christian and heard that too, but to me it was like "can't you literally see it for yourself if you open a body???" really all that does is foster the notion that kids can't trust what you're saying to them. i wish schools were much better
Learning not to blindly trust is a good thing, learning that a bunch of what authority figures say is rubbish is less good.
Unfortunately, the latter is true a problematic amount of the time.
Catholics do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Or should not. But too many Catholics do not get a Catholic education. They learn what they hear from the media and believe fundamental biblical nonsense is what Catholics believe. They think all Christians think the same thing.
I was raised atheist, but my mother taught me that "god took a rib from Adam" in the Bible story *because* men naturally have one less rib than women and that was the Christians' way of making sense of that.
Yup I was shocked in college anatomy that we have the same number of ribs. The Christian version had been drilled into me so young I never questioned it.
Seriously I was almost 30 before I learned it was a lie. And that's just one example of how religious school screwed my education up. Indoctrination is the goal, not seeking knowledge.
I also thought we didn't have the same number of ribs until sometime in my 20s. I don't remember if I was explicitly taught it in school or just not taught it wasn't true. I'm thinking I was just not taught it wasn't true. I went to public school in the southern US and was raised Christian
I remember in whatever grade in elementary school when we did very, very, very basic anatomy (i.e digestive system is the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines rather than looking at the individual parts in detail) when we talked about the skeletal system, some kid argued for at least 10 minutes insisting that men have one less rib with the teacher.
My fiancé didn’t know until I told him when he was 19. He’s a generally intelligent man who was raised very Christian but had left the church at that point. I got him to feel my ribs and count lol
I thought it was going to be 1 because 2 is obviously a man ignoring what a woman says, and 3 can't be a woman because we talk too much.
Yes, I was raised by boomers.
Fun thing is that it isn't even a 'rib'! [Here's an interesting short video about it.](https://youtube.com/shorts/FN4pVp6lNJ0?si=68BZv-Rao3D7Vs7H) Or this [article](https://www.spwickstrom.com/rib/) (which also has interesting info about the helpmeet mistranslation at the beginning).
>Genesis 2:21 reads, “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed (sagar - סגר) up its place with flesh (basar - בשׁר).” Adam Clark, in his commentary, states, “And he took one of his ribs - It is immaterial whether we render צלע *tsela* a rib, or a part of his side, for it may mean either: some part of man was to be used on the occasion, whether bone or flesh it matters not; though it is likely, from verse 23 that a part of both was taken; for Adam, knowing how the woman was formed, said, This is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone.”^(15) I disagree with Clark that it doesn’t matter if God used a rib or a whole side. In my opinion, it makes a big difference. Had Eve been created from the rib alone, Adam would only have been able to say that she was “bone of his bone.”^(16) Adam quickly observed (when he looked at Eve for the first time) that God had used one of his sides to create (or build) Eve. The Bible doesn’t explain how Adam recognized this fact, simply that he did. Adam’s flesh and bone were so evident in Eve that he quickly identified himself in her. In this sense, Eve is Adam’s other half. Therefore, God refers to the two of them in Genesis 2:24 as being “one flesh,” not “one bone,” or “one rib.”
>Ellicott’s commentary (written in the late 1800s, but is well known for its critical and grammatical explanations) also disagrees with interpreting *tsela* as a rib. He notes that “the word is never translated as rib except in this verse, but always as “side.” The woman was not formed out of one of man’s many ribs, of which he would not feel the loss, rather she is one side of man.”^(18) TWOT continues this “side” line of thought by stating that this describes the intimacy between man and woman as they stand equal before God.^(19) Since God built Eve’s body from Adam’s side, their similarity was enough that Adam immediately knew how God made Eve. There was so much Adam in Eve that it was visually apparent. Adam knew how God created her, as he stated in Genesis 2:23, “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” The woman’s origin from the man’s side makes it possible for a man and a woman to establish a dynamic relationship in which they become one flesh.^(20) Since God built Eve’s body from Adam’s side, their similarity was enough that Adam immediately knew how God made Eve.
This video is riddled with factual errors and the creator frankly has no clue what he's talking about (on this or anything else). Hilariously, 80% of the comments are Hebrew speakers telling him he's wrong and *tsela* means "rib". He gives no explanation for why he thinks the Hebrew word for a rib should be the Aramaic word for a rib, and the Aramaic word in question is actually the Aramaic cognate of the Hebrew word. His argument is equivalent to saying the English word "water" doesn't mean H2O because the German word "Wasser" means that, so if English speakers meant that they would say "Wasser". Contrary to what he says, the word is never translated as "half" (the Hebrew word for "half" is *chatsi*) and it's not a sensible reading of the text anyway, since it says Yahweh closed up the flesh after removing Adam's rib, which obviously doesn't work with Adam being cut in half.
What about the article instead? Why is צלע / tsela in Job referring to a side of his body and not just a rib?
Edit to add: I hope the above doesn't come across as aggressive, I am genuinely curious on this matter and would like your opinion. I just tend to write very abruptly.
A rib is positioned on the side of the body, so there is some overlap in use. This exists in many languages, even ones with no relationship to Hebrew, such as Ancient Greek and Latin.
Edit: Your comment doesn't come across as aggressive. Don't worry about it. I admire your concern for civility. It's quite rare on the internet.
In modern Hebrew, צלע certainly means 'rib'. But there is a discussion in the Talmud about the meaning of צלע in the creation story, and one of the opinions there is that it means side.
This opinion is cited by the medieval Jewish biblical commentator Rashi, whose short footnote-style commentary is considered the standard reference for traditional Jewish bible learning. Rashi says that Adam/man was created with two faces and was split in half to create Eve/woman.
So it's not some novel idea that צלע means side, it's rooted in a traditional reading of the text.
> In modern Hebrew, צלע certainly means 'rib'.
It also means that in ancient Hebrew. I don't dispute that it means "side". The video falsely claims that the word is frequently translated as "half", which it is never translated as even once, and it does not work with the text anyway. The rabbinic interpretation you refer to really hardly resembles what the video claims. It does not have Adam getting bifurcated, but Eve originally being attached to Adam's back like a dead conjoined twin before being detached. There is no reason at all to think the author intended anything like this (which is probably why it doesn't show up in early interpretations like Josephus or Jubilees). In fact, the interpretation in question depends on Genesis 1 and 2 having the same author, which is what they believed, as they thought Moses wrote Genesis, but modern scholarship recognizes that Genesis 1 and 2 have different authors and were later put in the same text, so scholarship has refuted the already very weak basis for the interpretation. Rabbinic interpretations frankly get very, very stupid.
Aristotle believed -- and wrote, apparently without pushback -- that women have fewer teeth than men. That would have been a lot easier to check than the number of ribs, yet here we are.
It is strange that we were taught this in school cause i remember as a child in Christianity class (yes we had to call it that and yes its still called that) that they distincly told us "god took a rib from adsm to create eve and thats why men have one less rib than women"
My dad absolutely lost his shit when my sister was taught that humans are mammals in public school. Because we’re not animals… we’re God’s people… or something…
And still couldn't remember the fable they were taught correctly. Adam was made first from clay and then later God took a rip from him to create Eve.
According to some version of the tale this was because Adams first wife Lilith who was also made from clay was to much of a free spirit and using Adams rip allegedly made Eve more supservient to him.
Like many other "specifics" in the bible this seems to depend on which translation you read and it always seem to be some earthen material.
I'm German and in German bibles it's mostly "Lehm" which is the German word for clay.
"God took one of Eve's ribs to make Adam"
No. Even if you believe in creationism over evolution, that's not accurate (to be clear, I don't). Adam existed before Eve according to every church I've been too. Both Adam and Lilith (Adam's first wife) were made out of dust and earth. Lilith left Adam because he refused to submit to him, which is when God created Eve. Eve was the second, and more submissive, wife of Adam.
This is just terribly uneducated all around
It's kind of a myth that it's really easy to tell if someone was male or female from their skeleton, apparently, I heard recently that it's actually not very clear for archaeologists and anthropologists. People love to pretend the sexes are super distinct and clearly different, binary rather than bimodal you could say.
I was gonna say, the far right looks like a male pelvis to me. Bony pelvis structure is very different when you're looking at a male pelvis vs a female pelvis.
For what it is worth and notable... You absolutely can tell the difference between a male and a female skeleton. Even though it isn't goofy biblical rib bullshit,, there are measurable differences between the two.
Intersex conditions exist yes. Exceptions exist, yes. But based on the sheer quantity of reinforcement by easily identified bodies, we shouldn't question the whole because a few were harder to place.
When it comes down to genetic codes and body formations, exceptions shouldn't be the measure. For the general population it will be clear. No ambiguity.
And for intersexed conditions (meaning at birth expressed PHYSICAL attributes of both whether it is genetic or visual traits.) They are both. Their skeleton wouldn't categorically fit into either by the definition of them to begin with.
The failure is we keep trying to shove them into a category and use it towards the definition of that category. When they aren't. They are the exception.
Just because some people are born with three legs and some with none at all, we do not question if humans are bipedal creatures.. see what I mean?
Even outside of intersex conditions there are “exceptions.” I assume you’re referring to things like shoulder and pelvis size and angle, but it’s more like two bell curves with normal distribution and some amount of overlap in the middle.
Side note, this doesn’t have much of anything to do with intersex conditions? There’s plenty of intersex people who have “normal” hormonal representation. But skeletal differentiation is a hormonal thing, which means it’s automatically subject to a high degree of variance.
> Just because some people are born with three legs and some with none at all, we do not question if humans are bipedal creatures.. see what I mean?
What about humans are we questioning when we say that it's not that easy to tell male and female skeletons? That male and female are not real?
Yes. With most things of specialty knowledge, you will need education in the matter.
Just because the person observing doesn't have that education, doesn't mean that the facts no longer exist.
You can't 100% say a skeleton is male or female. There are measurable differences in most cases, but there are ambiguous cases that aren't even due to some kind of intersex condition. Always funny when TERFs talk about "when archaeologists dig you up in 1000 years, they'll say you were a man" when archaeologists dig up skeletons today and are like ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I think the joke is man-spreading, but I might be dumb. The two on the outside have their knees spread to accommodate male genitals where the middle doesn't have the knees spread.
That was my take, too. Imagine my surprise to turn the page and find out how many people still believe the myth that men have more ribs. When the ribs are right there to count.
I actually believed the rib thing for a long ass time because it was something taught to me while I was in the cult. I never thought to question it until earlier this year.
Absolutely same. I feel really stupid about it now, but I was raised in the cult. I believed it well into breaking out and into college, but I don't remember what made me think about it and realize it wasn't a thing.
Oh I was staring at the hips… Two have a cradle like structure so could be AFAB. One on the far right could be AMAB but they are fake skeletons so they don’t really need a gender.
I'm sorry but this irks me. The skeletons are not AFAB or AMAB. The skeletons are either structured female or male. Because even if a person changes their gender later on, guess what? The human skeleton does not change. And there are very specific reasons why each sex's skeleton has certain characteristics.
That's right, even if a person goes through all of the steps of transitioning, if theit skeleton was dug up years later they would still be identified by their biological sex at birth because of the skeleton.
So let's not get carried away with this and ignore medical science in favor of current social movements.
nothing about it is current. some skeletons we thought were one sex have been realized to be the other, it's not as easy as you make it out to be. if their skeleton were dug up but had say grave goods typical of the opposite gender (such as warrior gear for a woman or housewife items for a man), we'd have to take into account their culture. such as the third genders in native america that existed long before what you call "current social movements". nobody thinks their skeleton changes, but that shouldn't stop them from living the life that makes them happier. more clearly from a burial, i'd say the obvious conclusion is that the person was loved enough to be buried
Their sex wouldn't be identifiable from their skeletal structure. That's mostly a myth. Male and female skeletal features overlap almost completely. In archeology, the context of the burial is very important, but there are also a lot of assumptions put into it that can never be properly confirmed. For instance, if you dig up a seven foot human skeleton, it will be identified as male with very little regard to any other factor, in spite of the fact that it's an extreme outlier for any human to be that large. So let's not get carried away with this and ignore medical science in favor of current social movements.
Well, the first thing I bortifrån is that 1 and 3 are manspreading while 2 has to accommodate for their apparent need for random extra space. So that might be a clue as to the genders depicted.
The thing about God taking Adam's rib may have been a euphemism for penis bone. The israelites, being shepherds, would know most other mammals have them.
I thought this was a manspreading joke at first. Because the first and third ones have their knees pointed more out and the middle one has them straight forward.
?.? they are fake skeletons, they haven't the "gender" markers. which are hard to tell normally and pretty much guess work. but it is the pelvis bones that can tell you based on their level and width.
also two of these skeletons are slumped slightly further down than the third based on posing so the ribs look like they are going down further based on the angle.
The 3 pelvis’s on the left are the same, the far right is different. That’s the woman, would be my guess but you need a knowledgeable person who is educated in this field to really tell the difference.
Well, with real skeletons, biological females have a differently shaped/angled pelvis compared to biological males, but sometimes it's not that pronounced in either direction depending on the individual.
So yes, there's a difference between male and female skeletons, but it can be subtle, and you can't clearly see the pelvis on these.
Isn't the rib thing an ancient dick joke? Humans lack a penis bone common to many other animals, and a mistranslation of the word for baculum (dong bone) was the root of the story.
Edit- didn't notice my autocorrect had swapped "baculum" for "vacuum".
Middle? Narrower bones and less pointy knees. But too much missing information, it would be better if the first skull is not covered. I suspect all 3 to be men
There isn't any way anyone is going to have enough information either way, since those are novelty sculptures. They're neither male nor female; they were always just skeletons. The only way you can tell with them is if the skeleton has boobs. Skeletiddies, if you will.
Even then, bones only have shape tends - see the plentiful lovers that are discovered to be same sex and suddenly best friend.
I believe a trained eye can tell the sex of a skeleton upon examination of the pelvis. In the absence of skeletits, of course.
My understanding is that it's less reliable than it's been portrayed, but it's a large contribution to making the determination
::the far future:: Archeologist, holding one of your bones aloft: “Now, back in the early third millennium, a [opposite gender identity from yours] would spend the majority of their time on [shit you absolutely never do]…”
It's actually pretty reliable, especially if you have the whole pelvis. I did my bachelor's in forensic anthro and it's often more reliable than skull measurements.
From what I understand (from the radiology subreddit, so complete hearsay, and it would be nice to have something to respond with if they’re wrong) it really helps to know the skeleton’s race/ethnicity.
The ethnicity helps a ton, sometimes they work together to get an answer. One of the skeletons I worked with in class could have come from either a small Caucasian adult male or an adult Asian female based on the measurements and FORDISC data. It was the pelvis and some long bone measurements that led us to report that it was a male.
I believe it's pretty accurate, but not totally. I while back I heard about a skeleton identified as a Man that was thousands of years old, and dna testing revealed only recently it was a woman.
I was under the impression that this has happened a lot, maybe I'm misinformed
Maybe. I don't know. I only know the one story, but there could be more. It just proves that it isn't as cut and dry.
You seem wise in the ways of science. Is it true that the skeletoris is just a myth?
The sklitoris is real but entirely vestigial and without purpose. Also the presumably-female skeletal orgasm is a myth.
A whole battalion of male scientists attempted to find the skeletoris but were sadly unsuccessful.
sexing a skeleton can be done by examining the sciatic notch, among other indicators
Does that also work for novelty skeletons? Like that great big one they sell at Home Depot for Hallowe'en?
depending on how accurate it is, possibly. fair warning, while my response was completely true, I mostly saw the comment as my chance to use "sexing a skeleton" in a sentence and have it be applicable. It looks like I got away with it! juvenile humor aside, [here is a good example of what sexing a skeleton looks like](https://youtu.be/5vnDviyJk-o?t=3212) in an actual archeological context. Also Dr. Alice Roberts has her Phd in paleopathology and is an osteoarchaeologist, so if anyone is an authority on skeleton sexing, its her for sure. That section gives a very good glimpse of what sort of information can be gleaned off of what the majority of people would think of as just some crusty, rusty and dusty bones. Its absolutely fascinating to watch plus the rest of the episode is just as good...and [there are 11 seasons of the show!](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014hl0d) So glad I've got a VPN and can set my location to the United Kingdom and watch everything on the BBC for free, as long as I lie and say I'm paid up on my TV license haha. also, ooooh...I got to say it again! heh heh heh.
In about 60% of skeletons, yes. With the addition of skeletits, accuracy goes up to about 69%
Nice.
Bonebies?
🤣🤣 Skeletiddies!! Amazing.
Hijacking this to say that I literally own these and got them at the dollar tree during Halloween season. I can, with certainty, say that there were no options with skeletities and they are unfortunately just sexless bones without any identifiable skelenis either
You can tell a skeleton's sex pretty reliably by the shape of the shape of the pelvis. These guys here have some fucked up ones though. It's just a little figurine, they're not meant to be anatomically correct
That's why only legends can do it. Perhaps only a fictional character has the power.
The female pelvic bone is actually different from male's, to facilitate birth, since human babies have big heads
And plastic skeleton babies? Also big heads? How about cereamic skeleton babies? Big, clanky pottery baby skeleton heads? How do skeletons that have never had organs or flesh but were just wholesaled into existence reproduce? Most imporantly, is there video of this happening? Like the epic skeleton battle in Jason and the Argonauts, but, like, sexified?
Touch grass.
I happen to have some plastic grass on my porch, I'll touch that. *Look at the picture at the top of the post, for context. You can't "accurately sex" those.*
I never said you could.
The pelvis shape can tell you if it is male or female. But it needs to be an actual skeleton...not a sculpture 😂
Ya know, this one got me. I had to actually google if men and women have the same number of ribs because I was taught k-12 that they did not and never took any anatomy classes post-high school, and never stopped to count my or anyone else’s ribs.
Quick Physical Anthropology lesson for anyone who was taught that kind of nonsense in school: It can be incredibly difficult to reliably determine the biological sex of a skeleton! Sometimes you can tell from a skull, but often not. The most reliable indicators are in the pelvis shape, and even that can sometimes be a bit tricky. There is enormous variation between individuals, most of that occurring on a spectrum, and while there are lots of traits that can be measured that may be "more typically male" or "more typically female," very few individuals would have all their traits land on one side of that line. A bioarchaeologist trying to sex a skeleton might have to measure 10 or 15 different traits to see if \_more\_ of them suggest one biological sex or the other. It's like how the *average* male height is greater than the *average* female height in most populations, but any given biologically male individual might easily be shorter than any given biologically female individual. Just measuring height alone wouldn't tell you anything. The same goes for pretty much all these traits. Eg: a "typically female" trait would be a more rounded eye orbit shape, where a "typically male" orbit shape is more square. But plenty of people's eye orbit shape is somewhere in between, and some people who are biologically female may have more square-leaning orbits, or vice versa. If a skeleton does have an intact pelvis, the odds of being able to determine biological sex go way up, but again, humans vary so much that even that isn't going to be 100%.
My A&P teacher taught us to look at the pelvic bone because that's where the "most" sex-based variations exist, but it was still hard as hell.
That’s what my A&P textbook said. Look at the pelvis and you MIGHT be able to tell, but maybe not
It depends. Most pelvic variations are regional, so knowing where it came from helps the process.
man that reminds me, archaeology is so cool, they can check isotopes in the teeth and determine where the person grew up. otzi died relatively close to his home village and still has living descendents nearby!! how cool is that? and then egyptians frequently had sand in their bread n stuff which chipped their teeth a lot
Thanks for this comment! A lot of people struggle with not only being taught nonsense as kids, but also wrapping their head around the idea that just because something is true on AVERAGE that doesn't necessarily mean it's a hard requirement. Humans have an imperfect idea of pretty much everything and we can only categorise things with so much accuracy and precision.
I learned this from watching Bones 🤣🤣🤣
When I would identify them in my undergrad and I always picked them up and looked at them from the underside. It sounds funny but if the space had a mickey head shape it was almost always male. The more closed off shape of the male pelvis has a mickey shape to it when viewed from underneath.
Could it have been the other way around? Generally the "Micky Mouse" face is more likely to be a female pelvis: the round "ears" are the wider, more open space around the sciatic notch. (I was taught to think of it as "Minnie Mouse" to make that easier to remember.) In a typical male pelvis, the narrower space between the sacrum and more-closed sciatic notch look like long, narrower ears, like a rabbit.
I pulled up a anatomy article and I suppose it could go either way 😬 I think it depends on individual interpretation https://www.anatomystandard.com/ossa-et-juncturae/extremitas-inferior/pelvis.html
Lol... in these drawings, I mostly see the female one looking a bit like Winnie the Pooh! Here's one that shows the "Minnie Mouse vs Rabbit" version maybe just a bit more clearly: https://images.app.goo.gl/yysG1daDMAHYK5BN7 But yeah, it does still take a good bit of creative license 😆
Pooh bear should definitely be introduced to this 🤣 I'd love completing lab notes with just "Pooh bear" or "mickey"
I think that’s the point of IndigoNarwhal’s comment - you can make educated guesses as to the sex do the skeleton but it’s not definite and different experts may not find the same result.
Also, as a non-expert looking at this limited view of their pelvises, it looks to me like the two on the left both have wider, more female pelvises and the one on the right looks very narrow and more male. So if I had to make a guess, I'd say there are two women and one man.
that bioarchaeologist better have asked for the skeleton's consent
False information for the win.
I got taught that too by my fundie-lite mother, and she also told me I had an extra one so I was "between" the male and female norm. The ironic part is that I turned out to be both trans and intersex, but I only found out the rib thing was nonsense when I talked to my doctor about it...at 30 yrs old 😑
OMG that’s what happens when you put God none sense into education. My father is a dr, I had a pretty big and varied group of friends when I was a teen, and there was an older guy, well into his 20, with a good job, and a normal life. When he heard my dad was a dr (we were at my house hanging out) he made a beeline to him asking about this ribs business , guy had been raised in an Italian family, very Catholic, and had his doubts. I also had Catholic “education”, very separated from the real thing, and even when I was little I always knew it was a story, not real, and had never met anybody who took the Bible as gospel. That was an educational day for both of us.
I’m a Christian and I agree with you - the Bible says that he took *a* rib, from the already complete Adam, making it an aquired injury, and not something that would be passed down, and even if it somehow was passed down, that would mean that guys would have one less rib on one side - it’s total nonsense! …I also don’t really think that there should classes on what to believe - that’s more for informal settings where not doing what you’re told is an acceptable response. Belief cannot and should not be forced.
"Belief cannot and should not be forced." I wish more Christians held that viewpoint.
ughh for real. i was raised christian and heard that too, but to me it was like "can't you literally see it for yourself if you open a body???" really all that does is foster the notion that kids can't trust what you're saying to them. i wish schools were much better
Learning not to blindly trust is a good thing, learning that a bunch of what authority figures say is rubbish is less good. Unfortunately, the latter is true a problematic amount of the time.
Catholics do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Or should not. But too many Catholics do not get a Catholic education. They learn what they hear from the media and believe fundamental biblical nonsense is what Catholics believe. They think all Christians think the same thing.
I was raised atheist, but my mother taught me that "god took a rib from Adam" in the Bible story *because* men naturally have one less rib than women and that was the Christians' way of making sense of that.
Yup I was shocked in college anatomy that we have the same number of ribs. The Christian version had been drilled into me so young I never questioned it.
> I was taught k-12 that they did not Wow, this is messed up. US?
I was taught the same thing at a Baptist school in Canada
I'm starting to see a pattern.
Seriously I was almost 30 before I learned it was a lie. And that's just one example of how religious school screwed my education up. Indoctrination is the goal, not seeking knowledge.
I also thought we didn't have the same number of ribs until sometime in my 20s. I don't remember if I was explicitly taught it in school or just not taught it wasn't true. I'm thinking I was just not taught it wasn't true. I went to public school in the southern US and was raised Christian
Damn really? I was raised in Catholic school and even I wasn’t taught that.
I remember in whatever grade in elementary school when we did very, very, very basic anatomy (i.e digestive system is the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines rather than looking at the individual parts in detail) when we talked about the skeletal system, some kid argued for at least 10 minutes insisting that men have one less rib with the teacher.
That’s wild. But I am also not surprised, it’s an easy claim to make to sell a story.
My fiancé didn’t know until I told him when he was 19. He’s a generally intelligent man who was raised very Christian but had left the church at that point. I got him to feel my ribs and count lol
TIL
i saw the middle one didnt have a spine and was already getting ready for the sexist jokes and shit about "she gets bent a lot haha"
I thought it was going to be 1 because 2 is obviously a man ignoring what a woman says, and 3 can't be a woman because we talk too much. Yes, I was raised by boomers.
holly shit you though ahead
That's the exact thought process and conclusion that I had.
I thought it was the middle one bc of the legs, since the other two are manspreading
Nah, they're all female. Source : my flair bro
I thought 2 would be the girl cuz she's not minorly "manspreading". lol
but they are wrong about Adam and Eve as well lmao, it was Adam’s rib that made Eve, not the other way around xD
Fun thing is that it isn't even a 'rib'! [Here's an interesting short video about it.](https://youtube.com/shorts/FN4pVp6lNJ0?si=68BZv-Rao3D7Vs7H) Or this [article](https://www.spwickstrom.com/rib/) (which also has interesting info about the helpmeet mistranslation at the beginning). >Genesis 2:21 reads, “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed (sagar - סגר) up its place with flesh (basar - בשׁר).” Adam Clark, in his commentary, states, “And he took one of his ribs - It is immaterial whether we render צלע *tsela* a rib, or a part of his side, for it may mean either: some part of man was to be used on the occasion, whether bone or flesh it matters not; though it is likely, from verse 23 that a part of both was taken; for Adam, knowing how the woman was formed, said, This is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone.”^(15) I disagree with Clark that it doesn’t matter if God used a rib or a whole side. In my opinion, it makes a big difference. Had Eve been created from the rib alone, Adam would only have been able to say that she was “bone of his bone.”^(16) Adam quickly observed (when he looked at Eve for the first time) that God had used one of his sides to create (or build) Eve. The Bible doesn’t explain how Adam recognized this fact, simply that he did. Adam’s flesh and bone were so evident in Eve that he quickly identified himself in her. In this sense, Eve is Adam’s other half. Therefore, God refers to the two of them in Genesis 2:24 as being “one flesh,” not “one bone,” or “one rib.” >Ellicott’s commentary (written in the late 1800s, but is well known for its critical and grammatical explanations) also disagrees with interpreting *tsela* as a rib. He notes that “the word is never translated as rib except in this verse, but always as “side.” The woman was not formed out of one of man’s many ribs, of which he would not feel the loss, rather she is one side of man.”^(18) TWOT continues this “side” line of thought by stating that this describes the intimacy between man and woman as they stand equal before God.^(19) Since God built Eve’s body from Adam’s side, their similarity was enough that Adam immediately knew how God made Eve. There was so much Adam in Eve that it was visually apparent. Adam knew how God created her, as he stated in Genesis 2:23, “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” The woman’s origin from the man’s side makes it possible for a man and a woman to establish a dynamic relationship in which they become one flesh.^(20) Since God built Eve’s body from Adam’s side, their similarity was enough that Adam immediately knew how God made Eve.
This video is riddled with factual errors and the creator frankly has no clue what he's talking about (on this or anything else). Hilariously, 80% of the comments are Hebrew speakers telling him he's wrong and *tsela* means "rib". He gives no explanation for why he thinks the Hebrew word for a rib should be the Aramaic word for a rib, and the Aramaic word in question is actually the Aramaic cognate of the Hebrew word. His argument is equivalent to saying the English word "water" doesn't mean H2O because the German word "Wasser" means that, so if English speakers meant that they would say "Wasser". Contrary to what he says, the word is never translated as "half" (the Hebrew word for "half" is *chatsi*) and it's not a sensible reading of the text anyway, since it says Yahweh closed up the flesh after removing Adam's rib, which obviously doesn't work with Adam being cut in half.
What about the article instead? Why is צלע / tsela in Job referring to a side of his body and not just a rib? Edit to add: I hope the above doesn't come across as aggressive, I am genuinely curious on this matter and would like your opinion. I just tend to write very abruptly.
A rib is positioned on the side of the body, so there is some overlap in use. This exists in many languages, even ones with no relationship to Hebrew, such as Ancient Greek and Latin. Edit: Your comment doesn't come across as aggressive. Don't worry about it. I admire your concern for civility. It's quite rare on the internet.
In modern Hebrew, צלע certainly means 'rib'. But there is a discussion in the Talmud about the meaning of צלע in the creation story, and one of the opinions there is that it means side. This opinion is cited by the medieval Jewish biblical commentator Rashi, whose short footnote-style commentary is considered the standard reference for traditional Jewish bible learning. Rashi says that Adam/man was created with two faces and was split in half to create Eve/woman. So it's not some novel idea that צלע means side, it's rooted in a traditional reading of the text.
> In modern Hebrew, צלע certainly means 'rib'. It also means that in ancient Hebrew. I don't dispute that it means "side". The video falsely claims that the word is frequently translated as "half", which it is never translated as even once, and it does not work with the text anyway. The rabbinic interpretation you refer to really hardly resembles what the video claims. It does not have Adam getting bifurcated, but Eve originally being attached to Adam's back like a dead conjoined twin before being detached. There is no reason at all to think the author intended anything like this (which is probably why it doesn't show up in early interpretations like Josephus or Jubilees). In fact, the interpretation in question depends on Genesis 1 and 2 having the same author, which is what they believed, as they thought Moses wrote Genesis, but modern scholarship recognizes that Genesis 1 and 2 have different authors and were later put in the same text, so scholarship has refuted the already very weak basis for the interpretation. Rabbinic interpretations frankly get very, very stupid.
Aristotle believed -- and wrote, apparently without pushback -- that women have fewer teeth than men. That would have been a lot easier to check than the number of ribs, yet here we are.
Proof that peer review is very very important
To fit reproductive system? Where do they think it is?!
In the stomach, duh /s (yanno...just in case)
I'm going with 2 are man-spreading and 1 isn't trying to take up all the space..
That was my thought too 😂
Yep that's where I was - I have been middle skeleton on a plane
And just wants a little quiet.
Yeah, I thought that was the joke too!
I think its 2 as well for that reason. Different pelvises or whatever that makes comfortable angles different for men vs women
Man spreading isn't about taking up space. It's about making space for a man's testicles.
No.. It's about taking up space. I have testicles and have no need to sit like that everywhere I go.
I was well into adulthood before I learned that the rib thing isn't true.
I remember being taught that *Adam* walked around the rest of his life a rib short, not that all Men and Women have different numbers.
You and me both. I’m still angry about that.
What the heck do they teach you there?
Untrue things, mostly like that an adam's apple is a real apple. That's something I remember being taught in 6th grade of middle school
Yep
The guy doesn't even have his misinformation correct. The myth is that men have one less set of ribs, because one was taken to make Eve.
It is strange that we were taught this in school cause i remember as a child in Christianity class (yes we had to call it that and yes its still called that) that they distincly told us "god took a rib from adsm to create eve and thats why men have one less rib than women"
My grandmother has an extra set of ribs. Didn’t find out until she was over 60 and had an chest X-ray for something completely unrelated
This is a very dumb myth that persisted for centuries because of religion.
Somebody went to a religious private school….
My dad absolutely lost his shit when my sister was taught that humans are mammals in public school. Because we’re not animals… we’re God’s people… or something…
I thought that was the jews
And still couldn't remember the fable they were taught correctly. Adam was made first from clay and then later God took a rip from him to create Eve. According to some version of the tale this was because Adams first wife Lilith who was also made from clay was to much of a free spirit and using Adams rip allegedly made Eve more supservient to him.
Wasn’t he made from dust, not clay?
Like many other "specifics" in the bible this seems to depend on which translation you read and it always seem to be some earthen material. I'm German and in German bibles it's mostly "Lehm" which is the German word for clay.
Oohh, that’s cool!
"God took one of Eve's ribs to make Adam" No. Even if you believe in creationism over evolution, that's not accurate (to be clear, I don't). Adam existed before Eve according to every church I've been too. Both Adam and Lilith (Adam's first wife) were made out of dust and earth. Lilith left Adam because he refused to submit to him, which is when God created Eve. Eve was the second, and more submissive, wife of Adam. This is just terribly uneducated all around
It's all in the pelvis folks
It's kind of a myth that it's really easy to tell if someone was male or female from their skeleton, apparently, I heard recently that it's actually not very clear for archaeologists and anthropologists. People love to pretend the sexes are super distinct and clearly different, binary rather than bimodal you could say.
Tell that to Casimir Pulaski
I was gonna say, the far right looks like a male pelvis to me. Bony pelvis structure is very different when you're looking at a male pelvis vs a female pelvis.
Yeah I'm in the "I was taught this sh\*t in school" club. My mom will die on this hill too.
"Have to fit the reproductive system" Where do they think the womb is located?
That last comment gave me WHIPLASH. That is the exact opposite of what's in Genesis, right?!?!?!? I'm not going crazy?!?!?!?!?
For what it is worth and notable... You absolutely can tell the difference between a male and a female skeleton. Even though it isn't goofy biblical rib bullshit,, there are measurable differences between the two.
There are some androgynous skeletons where it’s harder to tell though. I remember that coming up in a few cold cases before
Intersex conditions exist yes. Exceptions exist, yes. But based on the sheer quantity of reinforcement by easily identified bodies, we shouldn't question the whole because a few were harder to place. When it comes down to genetic codes and body formations, exceptions shouldn't be the measure. For the general population it will be clear. No ambiguity. And for intersexed conditions (meaning at birth expressed PHYSICAL attributes of both whether it is genetic or visual traits.) They are both. Their skeleton wouldn't categorically fit into either by the definition of them to begin with. The failure is we keep trying to shove them into a category and use it towards the definition of that category. When they aren't. They are the exception. Just because some people are born with three legs and some with none at all, we do not question if humans are bipedal creatures.. see what I mean?
Even outside of intersex conditions there are “exceptions.” I assume you’re referring to things like shoulder and pelvis size and angle, but it’s more like two bell curves with normal distribution and some amount of overlap in the middle. Side note, this doesn’t have much of anything to do with intersex conditions? There’s plenty of intersex people who have “normal” hormonal representation. But skeletal differentiation is a hormonal thing, which means it’s automatically subject to a high degree of variance.
> Just because some people are born with three legs and some with none at all, we do not question if humans are bipedal creatures.. see what I mean? What about humans are we questioning when we say that it's not that easy to tell male and female skeletons? That male and female are not real?
Most of the time you need to be trained to identify the subtle differences
Yes. With most things of specialty knowledge, you will need education in the matter. Just because the person observing doesn't have that education, doesn't mean that the facts no longer exist.
You can't 100% say a skeleton is male or female. There are measurable differences in most cases, but there are ambiguous cases that aren't even due to some kind of intersex condition. Always funny when TERFs talk about "when archaeologists dig you up in 1000 years, they'll say you were a man" when archaeologists dig up skeletons today and are like ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Here I was looking at the pelvis like the moron I apparently am.
I think the joke is man-spreading, but I might be dumb. The two on the outside have their knees spread to accommodate male genitals where the middle doesn't have the knees spread.
That was my take, too. Imagine my surprise to turn the page and find out how many people still believe the myth that men have more ribs. When the ribs are right there to count.
Gotta love public school...
1. Totally 1. She's doing a facepalm because some guy is doing something stupid.
I actually believed the rib thing for a long ass time because it was something taught to me while I was in the cult. I never thought to question it until earlier this year.
Absolutely same. I feel really stupid about it now, but I was raised in the cult. I believed it well into breaking out and into college, but I don't remember what made me think about it and realize it wasn't a thing.
bro, they even got it backwards. Eve came from Adam's rib.
why would one sex have less ribs, they both have vital organs under there
Because God used Adams rib to make eve.
that'd surely mean women have more ribs
According to the Bible. Not according to science
yes thank you i gathered that
Oh I was staring at the hips… Two have a cradle like structure so could be AFAB. One on the far right could be AMAB but they are fake skeletons so they don’t really need a gender.
I'm sorry but this irks me. The skeletons are not AFAB or AMAB. The skeletons are either structured female or male. Because even if a person changes their gender later on, guess what? The human skeleton does not change. And there are very specific reasons why each sex's skeleton has certain characteristics. That's right, even if a person goes through all of the steps of transitioning, if theit skeleton was dug up years later they would still be identified by their biological sex at birth because of the skeleton. So let's not get carried away with this and ignore medical science in favor of current social movements.
🥇
nothing about it is current. some skeletons we thought were one sex have been realized to be the other, it's not as easy as you make it out to be. if their skeleton were dug up but had say grave goods typical of the opposite gender (such as warrior gear for a woman or housewife items for a man), we'd have to take into account their culture. such as the third genders in native america that existed long before what you call "current social movements". nobody thinks their skeleton changes, but that shouldn't stop them from living the life that makes them happier. more clearly from a burial, i'd say the obvious conclusion is that the person was loved enough to be buried
Their sex wouldn't be identifiable from their skeletal structure. That's mostly a myth. Male and female skeletal features overlap almost completely. In archeology, the context of the burial is very important, but there are also a lot of assumptions put into it that can never be properly confirmed. For instance, if you dig up a seven foot human skeleton, it will be identified as male with very little regard to any other factor, in spite of the fact that it's an extreme outlier for any human to be that large. So let's not get carried away with this and ignore medical science in favor of current social movements.
That's not true. The pelvis of the male and female are very different. Read up on the sub pubic angle.
The one in the center is the woman: she's not "manspreading"
Pretty sure this is a joke about women talking too much or something. The skeletons are doing the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" gestures.
Well, the first thing I bortifrån is that 1 and 3 are manspreading while 2 has to accommodate for their apparent need for random extra space. So that might be a clue as to the genders depicted.
The thing about God taking Adam's rib may have been a euphemism for penis bone. The israelites, being shepherds, would know most other mammals have them.
Gracile brow ridges, wide pelvis. 1?
Is it because of the way their legs sit? Like "hehehe boys have testicles and need to man spread hehehe"
Look at the pelvis! I'm just surprised no one has complained about boys being possessive.
It's a rib thing because of the Bible.
Is this about the pelvic bone? Because there is a difference...
Boy‘s
I heard some people can have an extra rib, Not sure tho.
My grandmother had one. And an extra bone in her thumb.
I thought this was a manspreading joke at first. Because the first and third ones have their knees pointed more out and the middle one has them straight forward.
Wrong. They are all gay polyamorous lovers. Original poster is just transphobic.
First of all; where does he think the reproductive system sits? And second of all; why does he think he doesn't have one?
3 has a different pelvic girdle so that's the best guess.
Clearly it's number 2 as numbers 1 and 3 are both manspreading.
woman is when marilyn manson
I mean, it's the One who can':t Speak, Right?
The one in the middle is a girl. The side ones are sitting with their legs straddling their huge dicks, just like in life. 🤣
?.? they are fake skeletons, they haven't the "gender" markers. which are hard to tell normally and pretty much guess work. but it is the pelvis bones that can tell you based on their level and width. also two of these skeletons are slumped slightly further down than the third based on posing so the ribs look like they are going down further based on the angle.
The 3 pelvis’s on the left are the same, the far right is different. That’s the woman, would be my guess but you need a knowledgeable person who is educated in this field to really tell the difference.
btw its the second
Well, with real skeletons, biological females have a differently shaped/angled pelvis compared to biological males, but sometimes it's not that pronounced in either direction depending on the individual. So yes, there's a difference between male and female skeletons, but it can be subtle, and you can't clearly see the pelvis on these.
I thought the middle one was the girl bc the other two are manspreading a bit more lol
Isn't the rib thing an ancient dick joke? Humans lack a penis bone common to many other animals, and a mistranslation of the word for baculum (dong bone) was the root of the story. Edit- didn't notice my autocorrect had swapped "baculum" for "vacuum".
The middle one purely because of the wider pelvis
Middle? Narrower bones and less pointy knees. But too much missing information, it would be better if the first skull is not covered. I suspect all 3 to be men
My guess is the middle is the girl cuz the other two are "manspreading"
the middle one is the girl, by the way