The two unrelated dead bodies were just probably thrown in the grave and ended up in that position for all we know.

Or siblings, or just good mates, and Barry died as he was trying to rouse Dave...

> How the lovers died and ended up in the bin is still under speculation but both skeletons lack evidence of injury near the time of death and possibly died of asphyxiation

Would the DNA testing have revealed whether or not they were related, or would the DNA have been too damaged to work that out? (Of course, even if they were not related, they were still not necessarily lovers.)

DNA is fairly fragile. I'm not sure about this particular case, but have a look at https://slate.com/technology/2013/02/dna-testing-richard-iii... for general timelines.

> 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.

Literally came here to comment the same. I also thought about a father embracing his dead son possibly. Yeah anything is possible. They could also just be dead bodies thrown in there that happen to fall in a way thay looks like they were deliberately embracing.

> It's a little disrespectful IMO to refer to them as 'the lovers' just because of how they were laying.

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 think your first sentence that one "can't slander the dead" would be highly controversial, especially considering "don't speak ill of the dead" is an English proverb.

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.

Certainly as a matter of law you cannot slander or libel the dead and I definitely consider them fair game for a forthright discussion.

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.

> You can't slander the dead (who in any case have no rights) so it's OK to call them what you want.

That might be right from a legal point of view in many jurisdictions.

But that's pretty much irrelevant for the discussion at hand.

I think it’s fair based on this “color-blind” test:

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.

Reading between the lines much? If they were of opposite genders it is still reasonable to think that they could have been parent and child (given their ages), siblings, or even friends.

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 think it’s harmless to call them the “Hasanlu Lovers” because sure, the scene lends itself to that name. But to assume that that is the case seems odd to me, because these were two people who were dying together. If you discover two people who are entwined in a loving embrace under normal circumstances, assuming an intimate relationship seems defensible. But when people are dying, I think different assumptions have to be considered.

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.

It's a little strange to think that, if my city gets invaded and I hide in a dumpster with a complete stranger ten years my junior, archaeologists a thousand years later might argue about whether we were lovers. Male or female it's one hell of a logical jump.

The fact that they're (probably) males doesn't necessarily count in either direction. Many ancient civilizations - including Greek, Roman and Middle Eastern - had established cultural norms regarding homo-erotic relationships between men of such ages. It even continued in the Islamic period: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-o...

I think it's fairly logical such a title was chosen. Without the ability to determine exact nature of their relationship, this choice - conforming to modern heteronormativity, evoking emotions and sympathy for "the lovers" sharing an embrace at their last dying moments - makes most sense given the largest potential target group for news of this discovery are heterosexual adults.

The given title is most certainly the only reason why a huge percentage of people ever heard of Teppe Hasanlu archeological site.