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By: Ralf
Date: 8/23/99 9:34:26 AM
# Replies: 6
Tess, found this article about Amazons. Apparently, you're not the only one!
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Following the vindication of Herodotus's description of Himalayan gold-digging 'ants', a mistranslation of the Persian for marmot [FT97:9], it now seems that the Greek historian was right about the Amazons. He wrote of hearing rumours of these female warriors in his travels to Scythia north of the Black Sea around 450 BC. They lived to fight and were required to kill an enemy before marrying. They even cut off their right breasts, to carry quivers of arrows more conveniently.
Burial mounds called kurgans left be nomadic tribes on the central Asian steppes appear to be the graves of warrior women. Dating from the Sauromatian and Sarmatian cultures of 600 to 200 BC, most of the graves contain domestic objects such as spindles and glass beads. However, seven of 40 female graves excavated over the last four years by Jeannine Davis-Kimball (Director of the Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads in Berkeley, California) and her Russian colleagues near Pokrovka in northern Kazakstan looked more like the graves of warriors. Their report appeared in the January issue of Archaeology.
These graves contained bronze arrowheads, short daggers and long swords. The weapons were full-sized and showed signs of use, so they are unlikely to have served a merely ritual purpose; moreover, they had smaller hand grips than men's weapons usually have. "They were probably made specifically for these women," said Davis-Kimball, although she doesn't think they were full-time warriors; they were armed to protect their herds and grazing territory. "If they had been fighting all the time, more of the skeletons would show signs of violent deaths," she said. The weapons are unlikely to have been used for hunting; Sauromatian and Sarmatian sites have yielded plenty of sheep, horse and camel bones, but none from wild game.
In a find that hints at a matriarchal society, some Sarmatian graves of men held clay cooking pots and the skulls of small children. The women of Pokrovka lived more than 1,000 miles (1,600km) east of the Amazons described by Herodotus; all Davis-Kimball is suggesting is that they could be contemporaries of the Amazons or that their lives, and those of similar nomadic women who could ride and wield a sword in combat, might have inspired the legend.
Davis-Kimball has suggested that descendants of the female warriors may have ended up in Britain. In 175 AD the emperor Marcus Aurelius sent 5,500 Sarmatian cavalry to augment the troops defending Hadrian's Wall. "It could have been that, with their fighting tradition, women were an accepted part of that cavalry by then, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of those troops were women." she speculated.
The Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads has a home page at http://garnet.berkeley.edu/jkimball
San Francisco Chronicle, 28 Jan; D.Mail, 6 Feb; New Scientist, 8 Feb; New York Times, 25 Feb 1997.
Response #1
By: Homer The Brave
Date: 8/23/99 11:41:52 PM
But the question on everyone's mind:
Did they fancy boys?
Response #2
By: Tess Trueheart
Date: 9/11/99 12:17:52 PM
Considering all but myself died out..I'm not sure.
Response #3
By: Tess Trueheart
Date: 4/15/00 3:37:39 PM
Speaking of Amazons..I am not alone in the work place. Two other women who stand at least 5'10 are now employed. One lady is 5'11" and is on my team. My boss..he is about 5'7". He stated he can only handle looking up at two tall ladies.
The Amazons are returning. And leading the pack at 6'1/2" tall, I remain the one true Amazon Goddess!!
Response #4
By: Ralf
Date: 4/16/00 8:19:36 AM
<Homer Simpson>
Mmmm. Amazons. Blaaaaarrrrrrrrrrghhhh....
</Homer Simpson>
Response #5
By: Tess Trueheart
Date: 4/18/00 3:30:28 AM
Hee..hee.. The best part of this is we like to argue a point. For some reason we enjoy taking opposing views and stating our case. We don't take it personal, but others have heard us going at it and have made comments. One guy in the office told me I intimadate my boss. After I stopped laughing I asked my boss if he thought this. After he stopped laughing we agreed we like to disagree and to verbally reduce our stress at each other.
One of the very petite ladies in our office has an extremely vocal point of view, sometimes rather nasty..She aimed at me one day and I told her if she didn't back off I was going to hang her on the hook on the back of the bathroom door and leave her there. A week later she asked me how she would get down..There is an advantage to being the biggest person in the office...Muhahahaha...
Response #6
By: rorschach
Date: 4/19/00 10:17:45 AM
was she hanging from the hook when she asked how to get down?