Were there ever any real Amazon warrior women?
March 11, 2018
by Philip Perry
We marvel at Wonder Woman and other characters that represent female power. Although we view such symbols as a modern-day phenomenon, they aren’t new. They go back to the roots of western civilization and beyond. Greek myth, the stories of Homer and the writings of Herodotus all mention a band of fierce and skilled warrior women. Wonder Woman was based, partly, on these legends from antiquity.
Reports from ancient Persia (Iran) and China tell similar tales of horsewomen archers from the steppe—the grasslands of central Asia. Whether they existed or not was a preoccupation of folklorists and classicists in the 20th century, with some claiming the Greeks mistook beardless, weapon-wielding Mongols for female warriors. Still, there was enough written about Amazons from the ancient world to lead many scholars to believe they had existed.
http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/were-there-ever-any-real-amazon-warrior-women
