Beginning in the last decades of the 20th century and particularly with the fall of the communist states in Eastern Europe, there emerged hard archeological evidence that nomadic horse-warring women once existed in the distant past. They were for centuries rumored to have roamed the steppes of Eurasia and even further to the south and west, where Herodotus and other ancient Greek historians had placed them, along the southern shores of the Black Sea. The Bronze Age Proto-Scythian culture, which once occupied a larger sphere, north and east of the "Euxine Sea," as it was called, is the probable origin of the first Amazon legends.

These wandering, horse-warrior clans can partly explain the the mysterious kurgans-grave mounds, which were to be found on the chilly plains of the Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan during the 1990's. They are still the focal point of much study currently from on-going excavations by international teams of researchers involved in the new vibrant study of early Eurasian cultures. Information gleaned from these rare dome-shaped earthen tomb structures has shed exciting light on the women warrior legends of antiquity.

Archaeological research conducted in 1993 on the 5th century BCE nomadic peoples known as the Pazyryk in the Altai Mountain Range of Mongolia, opened the door to new speculations about the role of women in such distant societies. Russian archaeologist Natalia Polosmak was accustomed to finding burial mounds of men, usually warriors-buried at times ceremoniously in distinction with their women, their weapons, and sometimes their horses for their journey into an afterlife. But in that year a spectacular find was unearthed within an undisturbed kurgan located in a high valley known as the Ukok Plateau of Mongolia. A permafrost layer of ice was reached at a certain depth in the excavation of this mound, giving the discovery a special anticipation that the human remains inside might be of a more preserved condition.

This perma-frozen earth, when the outer planks of wood from the tomb were removed, afforded the archaeologist and her team a rare look into a twenty-five century-old burial chamber. It was a dramatic moment when Polomak and her researchers carefully removed the bronze pins securing an elongated coffin, hewed from the complete trunk of a tree. They then began pouring boiling water carefully over the ice mass to examine what was inside. What came to light was the unprecedented discovery of a sole woman's grave. She was obviously held in great reverence by the ancient Pazyryk people.

Beneath the melted ice was the body of a young, robust female, purposely mummified and remarkably well-preserved. She had been ceremonially laid to rest in the wooden burial chamber sometime in the 5th century BCE. Her unusually long coffin was constructed to accommodate a one-meter high feathered headdress she wore in death as well. Placed alongside her in the outer chamber of the kurgan, were the bodies of six horses, each also adorned ceremoniously with veneration.

It was obvious to the Russian archaeologist that this was no ordinary Eurasian grave site of the period. This woman, Polosmak surmised, must have been of certain royalty, a priestess, sorceress, or possibly a shamanic storyteller, obviously highly valued in her own culture. From the rich details which the permafrost ice had conserved, it was concluded that the woman was indeed held by her contemporaries in great esteem to be given such an extraordinary burial. She was found to be dressed in regal attire-multicolored clothing made of silk, wool and fine camel hair fabric.

It was further revealed by a pathologist working with the research team that this royal female was around twenty-five years of age and had died of natural causes. A breakage at the base of her skull was determined to have occurred postmortem and was probably related to the method of her embalming her for mummification. Great efforts had been made to preserve her body and prepare her for an after life, as her organs and eyes had been removed and a mixture of organic plant materials placed inside her skull and body to assist in the process of what was intended to be eternal preservation.

The most astonishing elements of ornamentation found on the mysterious woman's body, however, were her tattoos. Seen graphically as a result of her well-preserved skin, they covered her arms, shoulders and fingers. They depicted horses and deer in contorted but graceful poses. These elaborate designs had been permanently illustrated on her skin at an early age and obviously signified her elevated role in the society, according to Polosmak. In addition to the recognizable animals inscribed on her skin, there was a flare for the supernatural, as some creatures were fanciful, appearing as mythological in shape and design-even revealing what was to become the first 'griffon' creature designs.

Known today affectionately as the "Siberian ice maiden," this woman of the Western Mongolian Steppe is considered to be one of the most important archaeological finds ever made in this area of the world. It is also significant of a surprisingly more expansive female role-which nomadic women apparently had in these unrecorded cultures. The find sheds light on how such women were exceptionally perceived within their own society.

Subsequent excavations of Eurasian kurgans over the past three decades by Russian and American teams of archaeologists, covering broader regions, have revealed further discoveries concerning women and their placement in nomadic life. Such females were found to be interred sometimes alone and sometimes alongside men. They were found surprisingly to be in possession of weapons in their graves, tandem to ornamental objects near to their bodies.

During the mid-1990s American archaeologist Jeannine Davis-Kimball investigated scores of such kurgans on the Kazakh steppes, along the Kazakhstan and Russian border. Her research near the town of Pokrovka on the Souro-Sarmation culture revealed that, indeed, some of these burial mounds contained the skeletons of women, buried with their weapons nearby, and in some cases, like the "ice maiden" to the northeast, they were accompanied in death by their horses. In addition to objects associated with cosmetic ornamentation-rings, bracelets and bronze mirrors found in situ, there were also bronze arrowheads, iron swords and beautifully hammered javelin points. Several of the women's skeletal remains were consistent with what a lifetime on horseback would present to the body-permanently bowed leg bones and fatigued finger joints. A number of the men and women alike in these grave sites were obviously warriors who had sustained and died from lethal injuries received in mortal combat.

What was sensational about the outcome of UC Berkeley's Jeannine Davis-Kimball's work in the early 1990's, and which continues today through the work of her independent Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads, is that the roles of women in such societies have been discovered to be much more diverse than merely procreative and maternal. What is typically found inclusive of the lives of women from other ages and locations in the world is what can be described as a limited three-stage life, focusing on the roles of "maiden, mother, and crone."

Survival in these times of competition with other nomadic and horse-warring people, however, dictated that the women in such cultures had to take on a proactive military role, as well. These skills are consistent with the legends and myths of the women ancient Greek writers described in their reference to the Amazons. Jeanie Davis-Kimball, along with the research of others internationally, has confirmed that women in the distant past of Eurasia often fought equally along side their men on horseback. Evidence shows that they died bravely and were sometimes honored singly for their heroics in battle.

While such research has yet to identify an all-women society of nomadic warriors in these regions, as the Amazon legend suggests, it is not inconceivable that such a break-away faction of all women, highly skilled in warfare could have existed. Especially during a time associated with the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, when they might have eventually dissipated through warfare and migrations east by the time of the Classical Age, (500 - 324 BCE).

Vera Kovalevskaya, a Russian archaeologist, has pointed out that during the era of the expansive Scythian nation, a people thought to be the ancestors of the Sauro-Sarmation culture existed. There were periods in their efforts to gain dominance in the East when the men could have collectively been called away for as long as a full generation. This could have, during a peak in the women's defensive prowess, sparked the confidence and organization of an independent, all-woman clan.

Naturally, this breakaway micro-society would have maintained its nomadic warfare-based lifestyle. This subsequent, all-female sub-culture may have, over time, further evolved and managed to hold its own as an autonomous, nomadic group in the absence of their former men, shunning all efforts by others to replace them.

Could there have been a point in the history of this unique society that these maverick women decided to remain homogeneous out of their own hard-earned efficiency, unity and independence? Might their culture have lasted even generations, as the myths of the Amazon warriors in dominant legends suggest?

Professor Davis-Kimball's work excavating numerous kurgans primarily within the time frame of the later, Sauro-Samatian culture (c. 700- 400 BCE), is consistent with cultural descriptions given women warriors in the distant past, and written about during the Classical Age of Greece. Textual images of the Amazons by the contemporary Greek historian Herodotus and others are well-documented. Artistic depiction of Amazon women was quite fashionable during the Classical Period and afterwards as a motif found in architectural ornamentation, earthen ware decorative arts, burial sarcophagi, and sculpture.

It was Herodotus' belief, as today by a number of later researchers, that the legendary Amazons, along with the older and greater Scythian nation, were the natural ancestors of the horse-warring women who delight the imagination through legends and myths. The last decades have shed light into the dark recesses of history concerning what is myth and what is real of the Amazon warrior controversy. Ongoing research of this subject is establishing more compelling evidence which points to the physical existence of nomadic women combatants who fought male opponents bravely and lethally on horseback.

Dr. Davis-Kimball has since designated that the women excavated in the Eurasian kurgans were simultaneously supporting the life of what she has categorized as a division of "hearth women, priestesses, and warriors"-and sometimes combinations of the same. What is ultimately intriguing about this area of study is that these females were to have existed both at the localized place and time where the legendary Amazons fit into history.

Today, through the continued discoveries of ancient inscriptions and preserved translations by Greek scholars, there exist historomythical stories describing the interactions of ancient Greeks with a war-skilled population of women who valued heroic valor, fought against their domination, and which are consistent with certain events ascribed to the Amazons of antiquity. Two such examples of this are their alleged involvement in both the Attic and Trojan wars (believed by researchers to have occurred sometime during the 13th to 11th centuries BCE).

Moreover, the discovery of women as queens, priestesses or sorceresses who were greatly revered and interred in spectacular and honorable circumstances, also adds to the possibility of female adoration and heroine-worship-certainly supportive of the Amazon mystique. Whether revered for their contribution on the battlefield or for their power as political or spiritual leaders, the concept of the true "Amazon woman" is becoming more clearly defined as a historical and geographical possibility and less rigidly as merely an unattached mythical entity. The new, more dynamic multidimensional perception of women in the distant past and their established viable threat to men on the battlefield has now brought into serious question the previous preconceived notion that 'Amazon women' simply could not have existed.

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