NEW archaeological evidence unearthed in the southern Russian steppes suggests that the Amazons, those mythical female warriors of the ancient world, may not have been so mythical after all.
To date, our knowledge of the Amazons has come from the writings of Herodotus, fifth-century BC classical Greek vase paintings and some Hellenistic sarcophagi. Homer's Iliad also records how, in the tenth year of the siege of Troy and after the death of Hector, the Trojans were joined by a new ally - Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons.
Is it possible that the Amazons, far from being a figment of Homer's imagination, really existed?
A cautious `yes' seems to be the answer.
Ms Jeannine Davis-Kimball, director of the Centre for the Study of Eurasian Nomads in Berkeley, California, has spent much of the past four years excavating 50 kurgans - prehistoric burial mounds - near Pokrovka.
There, she and her Russian colleagues have found evidence which seems to confirm observations in Herodotus.
He travelled the Black Sea in 450 BC and reported hearing tales of warrior women who rode horses in the southern Russian steppes. He called them Amazons. The Scythians had another name but, because it translates as "killers of men," it seems they and Herodotus were talking about the same people. Ancient myth has it that after the Greeks defeated the Amazons at the battle of Thermodon, the Amazons went off and fought the Scythians.
When the Scythians discovered their adversaries were women, some of them decided, somewhat ahead of their time, to make love not war. Or, as Ms Davis-Kimball notes in the current edition of the American journal Archaeology, the Scythians "decided to lay down their arms and have their young men produce children with the women warriors."
In time, a number of Scythians and Amazons moved east to the southern steppes. "From their union was born a matriarchal tribe in which women used bows and arrows, rode horses, and were required to kill an enemy before marrying. These people were known as Sauromatians," writes Ms David-Kimball.
"In summer, she continues, the Sauromatians buried their dead near Pokrovka, occasionally reusing Bronze Age kurgans but more often building anew. Each mound originally contained a single grave but many were reused over the centuries for as many as 25 secondary interments.
"The original burial was often that of a woman placed in a pit four to six feet deep in the centre of the mound; sometimes short niches to the side of the pit held additional interments. Mortuary offerings, placed at her side, might include bronze arrow-heads in a quiver, jewellery, bronze mirrors, stone altars, pottery, pieces of coloured stone or ore, and perhaps horse trappings.
In one grave of seven females, there were iron swords or daggers, bronze arrowheads and whetstones to sharpen the weapons, "suggesting these seven women were warriors."
Ms Davis-Kimball disagrees with some Russian scholars who have suggested the burial trappings served a ritual purpose only. "The bowed-leg bones of one 13- or 14-year-old girl attest to a life on horseback and her array of arms included a dagger and dozens of arrowheads In a quiver made of wood and leather.
"Our excavations have shown that some Early Iron Age Pokrovka females held a unique position in society. They seem to have controlled much of the wealth, performed rituals for their families and clan, rode horseback, and possibly hunted saiga, a steppe antelope."
In times of stress, the war like women had outlets which perhaps their modern counterparts yearn far. When threatened, writes Ms Davis-Kimball, "they took to their saddles, bows and arrows ready, to defend their animals, pastures and clan."
