Marleen K asks: Did Amazon women really ever
exist? They are mentioned time and again by the ancient
Greeks in both their history and mythology, going all the way back to around the 8th century
B.C. They were described as formidable warriors
who were so dedicated to their craft that they cut off one breast to be better archers. They lived in female-only communities, taking
male lovers only once a year, solely for the purpose of procreation. These ferocious, independent, goddess-worshipping
women were called the Amazons. Their name has since been synonymous through
the ages with warrior women in general, including a group supposedly living on the Amazon River
in South America who explorer Francisco de Orellana engaged in a battle with. This led to the re-naming of the river to
Rio Amazonas. But did the formidable women who inspired
the Greek legends and later archetype ever actually exist? Until fairly recently, it was believed that
the Amazons were created from scratch by the patriarchal Greeks as a device to highlight
things like the supposed inherent superiority of males. For example, in the myths, while the Amazons
were frequently praised for their skill as warriors, they usually lost to the Greeks
in the end. (After all, Theseus made Antiope his concubine,
and when her Amazon friends came to Athens to free her, they were defeated as well.) However, in the early 1990s, archaeologists
Renate Rolle and Jeannine Davis-Kimball independently discovered evidence that began to challenge
the traditional beliefs about the Amazons. Later research by Stanford historian Adrienne
Mayor would go on to use this and other evidence to rather convincingly argue that there really
was a group of warrior women that inspired the legends. As to Rolle and Davis-Kimball's discoveries-
in the Ural Steppes in a remote Russian outpost, they found the graves of over 1,000 warriors,
almost 1/3 of which were women. For example, one grave contained the remains
of a woman holding a baby to her breast. Nothing odd there, but her finger bones left
evidence that she was indeed at the least a skilled archer- you see, these bones were
worn from bow pulling. She was also buried with a dagger and a quiver
filled with bronze-tipped arrows. As for the women in general, much like the
legendary Amazonians, they were extremely tall for the era- with average heights around
5 feet 6 inches (1.68 meters). On top of that, some of the women were also
bowlegged, similar to the men of the region- an artifact of their frequent and lengthy
periods of horseback riding. Further, they were often buried dressed for
battle. On top of that, much like the previous example,
they were also generally buried with various weapons, such as bows and arrows, as well
as sometimes things like swords, daggers, spears and forms of armor. As Mayor states,
“More than 1,000 ancient Scythian kurgans, or burial mounds, have been excavated, containing
skeletons and weapons. Archaeologists had previously assumed that
weapons could only belong to male warriors. But modern DNA analysis so far has revealed
that about 300 skeletons buried with weapons belong to females ranging in age from 10 to
45, and more are being found every year. The women's skeletons show battle injuries:
ribs slashed by swords, skulls bashed by battle-axes, and arrows embedded in bones.” So who were they and what is their potential
connection to the Amazon legends? It was determined that these women had been
Scythians- the horse-riding people named by the 5th century historian Herodotus as descendants
of the Amazons. Of course, this group definitely had men around,
so how was this accounted for by Herodotus? He reported a group of captured Amazons managed
to free themselves and killed off the Greeks on the ship they were being transported on. Not knowing how to sail, they ended up running
the ship aground, at which point they encountered the Scythians. One thing led to another and the Amazon women
became the wives of some of the Scythian men. This new group became nomads, traveling northeast
until they reached the Steppes where they began a new group known as the Sarmatians. Herodotus wrote:
“The women of the Sauromatae have continued from that day to the present to observe their
ancient customs, frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands...in war taking the field
and wearing the very same dress as the men....Their marriage law lays it down, that no girl shall
wed until she has killed a man in battle.” As for a more modern scholar's account of
this group, Mayor states, “They [were] tribes of nomads, of the steps. They roamed the vast territory of the region
known in antiquity as Scythia. That was a land stretching from the Black
Sea all the way east to Mongolia... these were fierce warlike tribes. They were the first people to domesticate
and then ride horses, and they perfected the invention of the recurve bow. So their lives centered on horses and archery. And they taught boys and girls how to ride
and shoot from childhood so that everyone in the tribe could hunt and defend the tribe....
a female mounted archer could be as fast and as deadly as a male... [So] women hunted and fought alongside men,
using the same weapons. The harsh landscape and their nomadic lifestyle
created its own form of equality. This amazed the ancient Greeks, whose women
led restricted indoor lives.” Mayor also argues these likely weren't just
the descendants of some group that inspired the Amazon legends, but actually potentially
were the inspiration for many of the legends themselves, as this group dates back to about
the 8th century BC- around the time the first mention of the Amazonian warrior women popped
up. She further states, "Their tattoos of deer
and geometric designs resemble the tattoos and patterns on Amazons depicted in ancient
Greek vase paintings". On top of that, "Early depictions of Amazons
showed them with Greek weapons and armor. But in later representations, they wielded
bows and battle-axes, rode horses, and wore pointed caps and patterned trousers characteristic
of steppe nomads." She sums up, "a wealth of archaeological discoveries...
show that there were women who behaved like Amazons—who wore the same clothes, who used
weapons, who rode horses, and who lived at the same time as the ancient Greeks." Thus it's possible, if not probable, that
it was these Scythian tribes and the women who fought and hunted alongside the men who
ultimately inspired the Greeks to develop various myths and legends about them and their
ancestors, with the tales becoming more fanciful over time, such as lopping or burning off
a breast to aid in archery. And as to that, Mayor states,
“It's a fake fact that has stuck like super glue for more than 2,500 years. If people think they know anything about Amazons,
it's that supposed fact. That story first surfaced in about 490 B.C. A patriotic Greek historian attempted to force
a Greek meaning on the word Amazon. Amazon is not a Greek word originally, and
it was borrowed from some other ancient culture. We don't know which, but because it sounded
a little bit like the word for breast — ‘mazos’ — and if you put an ‘A’ in front of
it, it means 'without.' So they thought he suggested it meant 'without
breast' and that demanded a story. So people said, ‘Well, maybe they cut off
one breast so they could draw a bow, shoot arrows.’ And that's a physiologically silly idea. And in fact, it was rejected by other Greek
writers in antiquity, and even more significantly, not one ancient artist ever bought that idea. All Amazons in Greek and Roman art are double-breasted,
and anyone who practices archery knows that breasts are not
a hindrance.” Speaking of hindrances- time, as in having
time enough to read books you want to read. Well, whether you feel like lopping off a
breast or not, this is a hindrance no more thanks to Blinkist! Bonus Fact:
Another common archery related myth is that flipping someone off meaning F-U came about
from archers showing they still had their middle fingers and could draw a bow. Unfortunately for those repeating this little
factoid, not only is there no evidence of this whatsoever, but we actually know definitively
that this is not where the practice of flipping people off came from. So where did it first pop up? It turns out this gesture has been around
for well over two thousand years, including having various similar connotations as it
has today going all the way back to the first references of it. Unsurprisingly once you stop and think about
versions of the expression's meaning, extending the middle finger simply represents the phallus,
with it perhaps natural enough that our forebears chose their longest finger to symbolically
represent man's favorite digit. (Although, there are some cultures that instead
chose the thumb, seemingly preferring to have their girth, rather than length, represented
here...) It's also been speculated that perhaps people
noticed that the curled fingers (or balled fist in the case of the thumb) made for a
good representation of the testicles. Either way, given the symbolism here, it's
no surprise that the expression has more or less always seemed to have meant something
akin to "F&*k You" in some form or other, sometimes literally. For example, in Ancient Greece, beyond being
a general insult, in some cases there seems to be a specific implication from the insult
that the person the gesture was directed at liked to take it up the bum. In the case of men, despite male on male lovin'
being widely accepted in the culture at the time, there were still potentially negative
connotations with regards to one's manliness when functioning as the bottom in such a rendezvous,
particularly the bottom for someone with lower social standing. Moving on to an early specific example we
have Aristphanes' 423 BC The Clouds. In it, a character known as Strepsiades, tired
of Socrates' pontificating, decides to flip off the famed philosopher. “SOCRATES: Well, to begin with,
they’ll make you elegant in company— and you’ll recognize the different rhythms,
the enoplian and the dactylic, which is like a digit. STREPSIADES: Like a digit! By god, that’s something I do know! SOCRATES: Then tell me. STREPSIADES: When I was a lad a digit meant
this! [Strepsiades sticks his middle finger straight
up under Socrates’ nose]” In the third century AD Lives of the Eminent
Philosophers, we also have this reference of a supposed incidence that occurred in the
4th century BC, concerning famed orator Demosthenes and philosopher Diogenes. “[Diogenes] once found Demosthenes the orator
lunching at an inn, and, when he retired within, Diogenes said, "All the more you will be inside
the tavern." When some strangers expressed a wish to see
Demosthenes, [Diogenes] stretched out his middle finger and said, "There goes the demagogue
of Athens."” (No doubt water was needed to put out the
fire created by that wicked burn.) From then all the way until now, this gesture
has endured with this same general meaning, and at no point seeming to have anything specifically
to do with archery.
