Denia, Spain (Reuters) — Archaeologists working to unearth an ancient Islamic coastal town in Spain recently asked modern Social Justice experts to help determine the gender identity of more than 5,000 skeletons.

The team found a cemetery with thousands of graves from 1200 AD — when part of Spain was an Islamic state known as “al-Andalus” — but hesitated to identify the remains as “male” or “female.”

“Frankly, we were offended by the possibility that we might offend the non-binary Muslim community of the 13th century,” said chief archaeologist Tony Robertson. “So we asked for help identifying which of 57 gender identities each individual might have adopted.”

Unfortunately, hard evidence of social gender constructs was impossible to find, and Muslim leaders from around the world threatened to murder the entire scientific team for assuming non-binary genders of the dead.

“Our researchers were forced to assign traditional male and female genders using standard techniques from forensic biology,” said Robertson. “But that doesn’t mean 57 genders didn’t exist in ancient Andalus.”