The Amazons

A web page of
Eckard Wolff-Postler

Is there proof for the existence of Amazons?

No archeological researches to this date were able to substantiate the existence of the Amazons beyond doubt. This nomad people obviously did not leave behind permanent settlements or buildings that an archeologists spade may recover.

Only their recurrent mention in the writings of the antique historians give cause to the supposition that these warrioresses really did exist. Much to our regret original contemporary testimonies have been lost. We only find short quotations from more ancient reports, on which scholars and historians, whose scripts remained, are bearing.

And there are ancient pictures on the wonderful vases of the Greek that remained. Again and again we there find women in armour, warlike women battling men.

Archeological findings


Arrowheads




Fossilized shells

We found only one more serious archeological research, that indicates the existence of matriarchaic societies in this time and in this part of the world:

The Californian archeologist Dr.Jeannine Davis-Kimball in 1994/95 examined at the Kazakh border near the town of Pokrovka in southern Russia 50 burial mounds.

They contained the sceletons of women, buried together with weapons and suggest that the tales told by the Greek may have a real background.

Nomades, known as Sauromates, buried their dead at this site from about 600 b.Chr. After about 400 b.Chr. the burial mounds of Pokrovka were used by Sarmates, another nomad tribe, possibly related to the Sauromates.

Generally here females were buried with a wider variety and larger quantity of artifacts than males, and seven female graves contained iron swords or daggers, bronce arrowheads, and whetstones to sharpen the weapons. Other women were buried with sacral or household items apparently according to their occupation at their lifetime.

Some scholars have argued that weapons found in female burials served a purely ritual purpose, but the bones tell a different story. The bowed leg bones of one 13 to 14-year-old girl attest a life on horseback, and a bent arrowhead found in the body cavity of another woman suggest that she had been killed in battle.



I am greatly endebted to thank Dr. Davis-Kimball for the kind permission to cite her on my pages





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What have the Sauromates to do with Amazons?

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One thing has to be made clear: The Pokrovka women cannot have been the Amazons of Greek myth, but they have been one of many nomadic tribes who occupied the Eurasian steppes in the early Iron Age. The findings give the historic sources a much stronger plausibility: There were female warriors in this part of the world! And Herodot tells us, how they appeared in the area North of the Black sea.

If you want to read more of the excavations Dr.Jeannine Davis-Kimball 1994/1995 performed in the Pokrovka area, you should not fail to have a look at her abstract.