Amazon Warriors - Fact or Fiction?

Greek mythology includes many tales of the Amazons, a tribe of women who were reputed to be fierce fighters. They figure prominently in the epic poem the Iliad, Homer's 8th-century-B.C. account of the Trojan War. Homer depicted the Amazons as a race of female warriors who lived in a matriarchal society, keeping only their daughters and maiming or killing their sons. Some myths say that the Amazons performed mastectomies, cutting off one breast to allow them to shoot more effectively with bow and arrow.

Herodotus, the 5th-century-B.C. Greek historian, also mentioned the Amazons in his writings, reporting that when the Amazons lost the battle at Thermodon to the Greeks and were subsequently imprisoned on Greek sailing vessels, they murdered the ships' crews. Not knowing how to sail, the women drifted until they eventually landed on the shores of the Black Sea, where they came into contact with the nomadic Scythians. According to some researchers, the Amazons married into this nomadic culture and eventually moved to the Russian steppes, where the group developed what later came to be known as the Sauromatian culture.

Is it possible that the fierce warriors of Greek mythology really ended up in the grasslands of southern Russia? Some investigators deny that the Amazons of ancient Greece ever existed outside of mythology. But archaeologists have explored the notion that members of this mythical warrior tribe settled in the steppes. Digs at Pokrovka, Russia, near the Kazakstan border, have furnished burial artifacts dating from the 6th century to the 4th century B.C. that indicate that the Sauromatians were a nomadic people with expertise in warfare and raising animals. The women of this culture were buried with a greater number and a wider variety of weapons than were the men. Excavations have produced one female skeleton whose legs suggest that she was a frequent horseback rider and another containing a bent arrowhead, indicating that the woman died in battle. Such evidence suggests that warrior women played a prominent role in the nomadic Sauromatian culture.

The Sauromatian culture evolved into the Sarmatian culture, whose members also were nomads skilled in animal husbandry and the art of warfare. According to Jeannine Davis-Kimball, director of the American-Eurasian Research Institute and the Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads (CSEN), the Sarmatians began to expand their territory during the 4th century B.C., moving westward in order to trade with the Romans and settling in cities on the major trade routes. Archaeological evidence suggests that although the Sarmatian women maintained their power and increased their wealth during this time, their status had changed. Gold and highly ornamented burial artifacts suggest that the women were considered priestesses, but the artifacts of this period show fewer weapons, an indication that the women's role as warriors had waned. Between the 2d century B.C. and the 3d century A.D., the Sarmatians moved to the regions north and west of the Black Sea and invaded Dacia, an area that is now Romania. In 370 the Huns conquered the Sarmatians and either absorbed or eliminated them. Some archaeologists believe that the remnants of an assimilated Sarmatian culture can be found in the descendents of the Hun conquerors, who today reside in western Mongolia.

Davis-Kimball and other researchers at CSEN continue to address the question of whether the Sauromatian and Sarmatian women were indeed the descendents of the Amazons of Greek mythology. According to Davis-Kimball the Sarmatian women were mainly occupied with raising animals and were fighters only when they needed to safeguard their territory. While she acknowledges that archaeological findings refute the notion that in ancient times all women remained at home caring for their children and has found evidence that women of high status were common in nomadic societies of ancient Eurasia, she is less convinced that the excavated Sarmatian female remains are likely the descendents of the fabled Amazon warriors. "I think the idea of the 'Amazon' was created by the Greeks for their own purposes," she says.

Over the past decade, however, other researchers have found archaeological evidence that might lend support to backers of the Amazon thesis. Female mummies from the Ukok Plateau in Eurasia have provided evidence of a matriarchal warrior culture in the Attai region, but the jury is still out on whether or not these women were descended from the Amazons of ancient Greece. In the meantime, research continues into these and other such finds.