The 2,600-Year-Old Amazon Warrior Girl
Vladimir Semyonov/The Siberian TimesFound 32 years ago and assumed to have been male, the mummified remains were confirmed as female this year.
When a team of scientists discovered the mummified corpse of a young warrior in Russia’s modern-day Tuva Republic in 1988, they assumed it was a young boy or man.
But thanks to new technology, that presumption was proven to be inaccurate 32 years later. The deceased warrior was a girl — and she may have been one of the renowned Amazon warriors from ancient Greek literature.
The remains, originally unearthed by scientists Marina Kilunovskaya and Vladimir Semyonov, were estimated to have been buried in the early 6th century B.C. During the excavation of the 2,600-year-old body, several artifacts were uncovered at the site — including items that were used by particularly esteemed warriors.
Vladimir Semyonov/The Siberian TimesThe young girl’s corpse was so well-preserved that a wart on her face was still easily visible.
From a three-foot birch bow to an axe to a set of 10 arrows, the site was littered with remarkable finds. The arrows varied in construction material, with some using wood at their tips and others using bone or bronze parts.
The buried female warrior was found in a shirt and brown bottoms, which were worn underneath a double-breasted fur coat. But traditionally female items — like beads and mirrors — were nowhere to be found.
As a result, the initial analysis was that this was a man’s grave. Only through genetic testing did the researchers prove otherwise. The recent analysis by the Laboratory of Historical Genetics, Radiocarbon Analysis, and Applied Physics in Moscow has shown that this warrior was not only a girl, but a very young girl at that.
Vladimir Semyonov/The Siberian TimesOne of the unearthed arrows was made with a bone tip, while two were made of wood, and the rest of bronze.
The results showed that the deceased girl was about 12 to 13 years old at the time of her death. Kilunovskaya was stunned at this revelation, which sheds new light on the social history of Scythian society. Of course, it also turns her attention to the myth of the Amazons.
Homer’s Iliad from the 8th century B.C. is believed to have been the first to mention the Amazon warriors in ancient Greek literature. He characterized them as “antianeirai,” which scholars have interpreted as “the opposite of men,” “antagonistic to men,” or “the equal of men.”
Herodotus wrote about the Amazons centuries later and claimed that these women hailed from Central Eurasia’s Scythia. The Amazons were long relegated to myth, as some historians couldn’t fathom that fearsome warriors from the past were women.
Ultimately, that cynical worldview is being disproven with every passing year — as new archaeological discoveries reveal female warrior burial sites all around the world.
