New evidence suggests that the Amazons - female warriors in ancient Greek mythology - had very real prototypes in the nomadic Scythian tribes. These tribes roamed the steppes at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains between 900 and 200 BC, raiding other tribes in Europe and Asia. Evidence of these raids is high mounds scattered throughout the Caucasus from the Black Sea to China. When archaeologists began to study these burials, they assumed that the remains near which weapons were found belonged to men, and those near which mirrors and spindles were found belonged to women.
Modern scientific methods, such as DNA analysis, have helped scientists discover that skeletons buried with bows, arrows, and other weapons may not be exclusively male.
New facts indicate that more than a third of the skeletons in Scythian graves belong to women who fell in battle, i.e. female warriors were common among the formidable Scythians.
“The prototype of the mythical Amazons became absolutely real women warriors - representatives of the nomadic people who traveled across the steppes of Eurasia. They were skilled at bowing and were great riders,”says Adrienne Mayor, professor of ancient history at Stanford University. "Their remains, found in ancient burial mounds, are proof of this."
Military weapons, jewelry and household items found among the remains - this is the little that can tell us about the real life of a Scythian woman. Some historians argue that the Scythians did not have their own writing, therefore, one has to be content with bizarre mythical images of the Amazons in the writings of outside observers, such as the ancient Greeks.
Most of what the Greeks wrote about the Amazons can be highly questioned. For example, the myth of a tribe consisting entirely of women who, to reproduce, intermarried with men from other tribes and killed newborn boys, leaving only girls alive, sounds more like a paranoid male fantasy than a historical fact. Likewise, the myth that the Amazons cut off one breast for the convenience of archery sounds ridiculous to any woman who plays the sport. (Not to mention the high mortality that such an extreme procedure could have entailed, given the medical capabilities of the time).
In fact, this myth owes its origin to an ancient Greek writer named Gellanikos, who claimed that the word mazon is similar to maston - breast, with the prefix a- indicating its absence. Modern scientists believe that the name of the tribe actually comes from the name of the legendary Circassian warrior queen Amezan.
The only reliable information that we can glean from ancient Greek sources, and which has a direct bearing on the Scythians, is that many nomadic tribes had female warriors who fought side by side with men. These tribes did not have a very large number of people, and each warrior was worth their weight in gold, so women were an equal fighting force capable of deciding the outcome of a battle. They were not inferior to men in the art of horse riding and archery.
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It is generally accepted that only unmarried women fought along with men, and by entering into marriage, a warrior woman turned into an ordinary, as they would say now, housewife. Several graves were found, however, where warrior women were buried with their children, and the contents of the graves most likely indicate that the warrior was the mother of these children.
Thus, ancient literary, artistic, and archaeological evidence indicates that an egalitarian nomadic society did exist in the steppes, a lifestyle that aroused awe and admiration among the Greeks.
Svetlana Bodrik