If you didn’t know anything about these two, what would you call them?
The historical answer is: the lovers, because they actually thought they were of different genders when found, and it seemed like a good fit to the people who found them.
The problem is that if I now add “turns out they’re both male”, backtracking to say “we can’t be sure they were lovers” looks pretty suspect.
Bottom line, before knowing their genders, we called them “the lovers.” Even with no gender identification whatsoever, that’s what people went with. So let’s keep it.
P.S. I presume they’re not related because I think the DNA studies would’ve uncovered that.
Now if you ask me I would say that they were lovers (regardless of their gender), too, but it's not a definitive interpretation.
I can imagine that even two total strangers might seek to comfort one another if they were trapped in a burning building together, as some of the archaeologists surmise. “I don’t want to die! Can you hold me?”
That said, it’s so stupid that we have these arguments when really what we see here is something so sad and touching and human. Whether they were lovers or not the important takeaway is that these two seemingly found comfort in each other in their dying moments.
You can't slander the dead (who in any case have no rights) so it's OK to call them what you want. And poetic names abound, from archeological sites like this, to the species names of insects, to toponyms and beyond.
I consider it harmless. Ideological names are more dangerous.
If someone found useful DNA and determined a parental relationship then it would make sense to change a then misleading popular name to something likely more accurate, but until then...
I personally believe in that proverb (there may be extremes where it would be okay), and many others do too - or else, it wouldn't have attained its status as one.
In the case of these two skeletons, so little is known that they are essentially a natural phenomenon; calling them “lovers” is to me no different from calling a geological structure “the old man of the mountain” or the “tooth of time”. Simply a poetic expression.
That might be right from a legal point of view in many jurisdictions.
But that's pretty much irrelevant for the discussion at hand.
The given title is most certainly the only reason why a huge percentage of people ever heard of Teppe Hasanlu archeological site.
> What’s the shelf life of DNA?
> About a month to a million years, theoretically. The decay rate of DNA depends on the conditions of its storage and packaging. Above all, it depends on whether the DNA is exposed to heat, water, sunlight, and oxygen. If a body is left out in the sun and rain, its DNA will be useful for testing for only a few weeks. If it’s buried a few feet below the ground, the DNA will last about 1,000 to 10,000 years. If it’s frozen in Antarctic ice, it could last a few hundred thousand years. For best results, samples should be dried, vacuum-packed, and frozen at about -80 degrees Celsius. Even then, ambient radiation is likely to render DNA unrecognizable before it celebrates its millionth birthday.