Excuse me Ushgarak, who says that there weren't any women warrior in the past? The greeks had female warriors and so did the Romans! Why can't we have them now? Why have some of the guys ( Not all of them ) have been saying that women didn't fight during Greek times? Thats absurd, there are plenty of proof that those women warriors did exist! Look at the names that Storm posted. those women certainly existed! And what about Joan of Arc? she was a female ( a very young one ) and she fought in battle.
Women maynot possess the streght of a man. But that doesn't mean we can't fight! women can relly on stealth and endurity. which are things that males may not posess.
yes! women should be allowed to fight! is about serving a cause or your country.
posted by XenaNO male posess bith
women can relly on stealth and endurity. which are things that males may not posess.
Then why is he doubting the posibility of amazon women?
Originally posted by Xena
Excuse me Ushgarak, who says that there weren't any women warrior in the past? The greeks had female warriors and so did the Romans! Why can't we have them now? Why have some of the guys ( Not all of them ) have been saying that women didn't fight during Greek times? Thats absurd, there are plenty of proof that those women warriors did exist! Look at the names that Storm posted. those women certainly existed! And what about Joan of Arc? she was a female ( a very young one ) and she fought in battle.Women maynot possess the streght of a man. But that doesn't mean we can't fight! women can relly on stealth and endurity. which are things that males may not posess.
yes! women should be allowed to fight! is about serving a cause or your country.
Enough Men posess he gifts of stealth and endurity, thing with those kinds of arguements IMO is that it might be a tad higher with one gender than the other, but it will never be VERY dramatic. Secondly it is very individual, Besides both Stealth, Endurance and Strength can be trained to a very large extend.
The examples Storm gave were very good examples, but the fact is Look at the examples Storm gave, they were all LEADERS of a revolt or a rebellion. They still do NOT prove that women made up a significant portion of the army. I'm not saying they weren't there. I'm saying that in general there were still a lot more men on the Battle Field. As for the traditional Greek and Roman Armies, I am pretty sure that almost no women were allowed.
Joan of Arc is indeed an exception to the rule that there were again ALMOST NO women on the battle fields during the medieval of europe.
If you would travel back in time and even suggest that idea to someone in that time. I'm pretty sure they'd think you're insane.
Also the evidence about Joan of Arc makes clear that most of the french nobles and knights didn't not like the idea of fighting with a woman. It was mostly due to their king that she was even allowed to the fight.
and again Joan of Arc was a leader, the amount of realy combat she was is in is limited. And Medieval European Knights (to which she belonged) had a fairly "luxurious" position on the battle field.
Originally posted by Xena
Im sure Archeologist are searchin for things like that in Greece.
Ancient Graves of Warrior Women Offer Hints of Amazons
The ancient Greeks could certainly tell a good yarn. Cultivatinga kernel of
fact, or less, they could bring forth a feast of a story to nourish
imaginations down through the ages. One such tale was about a society
of fierce warrior women -- the Amazons.
In the account by the historian Herodotus in the fifth century B.C.,
Greek soldiers on a campaign in the Black Sea region found themselves
in combat against an army of women. Although the Greeks won, their
foe made a lasting impression. Here were women who did not confine
themselves, as Greek women did, to cooking and weaving and other
domestic roles. They lived to fight and were required to kill an enemy
before marrying. They even cut off their right breasts, the better to
shoot with bows and arrows.
Or so the story went. Herodotus conceded that, in all honesty, he had
never seen an Amazon; his tale was based on hearsay. But
archeologists excavating graves in the Eurasian steppes are now finding
evidence that there may be something to the Amazon legend after all.
Over the last four years, American and Russian archeologists have
examined 44 mounds, or kurgans, near the town of Pokrovka in
Kazakhstan at the Russian border, where ancient nomad cultures buried
their dead. From the grave goods and other evidence, the burials
appeared to be associated first with the Sauromatians and then the
early Sarmatians, Indo-European-speaking herders who lived on the
steppes in the sixth to fourth centuries B.C. and fourth to second
centuries B.C., respectively.
But the most striking discovery at Pokrovka has been the skeletons of
women buried with swords and daggers. One young woman, bow-legged
from riding horseback, wore around her neck an amulet in the form of a
leather pouch containing a bronze arrowhead. At her right side was an
iron dagger; at her left, a quiver holding more than 40 arrows tipped
with bronze.
"These women were warriors of some sort," said Dr. Jeannine Davis-
Kimball, a leader of the excavations. "They were not necessarily fighting
battles all the time, like a Genghis Khan, but protecting their herds and
grazing territory when they had to. If they had been fighting all the
time, more of the skeletons would show signs of violent deaths."
In that case, the Sauromation-Sarmation women probably did not quite
fit the larger-than-life Amazon image of women who seemed to prefer
making war to making love. Also, the women at Pokrovka lived more
than 1,000 miles east of the Amazons the Greeks supposedly
encountered. So Dr. Davis-Kimball is not jumping to any conclusions
that these women were indeed the Amazons of legend, only suggesting
that they could be contemporaries of the Amazons or that their lives,
and those of similar nomadic women who could ride and wield a sword
or dagger in combat, may have inspired the legend.
In the earlier Sauromatian graves, the skeletons revealed one
suggestive Amazonian attribute. The men and women, at an average of
5 feet 10 inches and 5 feet 6 inches, respectively, were taller and more
robust than normal people at that time.
Of more importance, the new discoveries are forcing anthropologists
and historians to reconsider the status and role of women in the
Eurasian nomad societies of the first millennium B.C. The research, she
said, showed that women seemed to have more wealth, power and
status in these cultures than anyone had thought. And certain women,
perhaps the elite of the tribe, appeared to be trained from an early age
to be warriors on horseback.
Dr. Davis-Kimball, an archeologist at the Center for the Study of
Eurasian Nomads in Berkeley, Calif., described the Pokrovka research
in an article in the current issue of Archaeology magazine and in a more
scholarly report to be published soon in The Journal of Indo-European
Studies. She and other specialists in Central Asian archeology discussed
the interpretations in interviews last week.
In her analysis, Dr. Davis-Kimball said burials at Pokrovka and other
sites seemed to reveal three categories for women of the culture.
Graves with luxury goods, including beads, colored glass and gilted
earrings, suggested that the "most frequently found status among
females," she said, "is that of femininity and the hearth." The women in
a few graves might have been priestesses; they were buried with stone
altars, bronze mirrors used in healing and other cultic materials. Finally,
there were the warrior women.
Dr. Nicola DiCosmo, a historian of Central Asia at Harvard University,
said that other archeological findings in the steppes from Russia to
Mongolia seemed to indicate that Dr. Davis-Kimball "is on to something."
The findings, he said, showed that "women in early nomadic societies
could have had a higher profile in their cultures than women in
sedentary societies at the same time."
Dr. Elizabeth J.W. Barber, an archeologist at Occidental College in Los
Angeles, noted that the research represented a significant change in the
most rudimentary level of archeological interpretations. Until recently,
she said, "most people assumed that if a grave had weapons, the
skeleton was a man -- now they can't be so sure."
Some Russian archeologists who had made similar discoveries at other
sites have argued that the weapons found with female burials had
nothing to do with a person's life but were placed there for protection in
the afterlife. But Dr. Davis-Kimball points to the bowed leg bones and
amulets seeming to denote prowess in the hunt and battle to dispute
such an explanation.
"Probably, we've been carried away with the macho image of the
nomad," said Dr. Claudia Chang, an anthropologist at Sweet Briar
College in Virginia, who conducts excavations in Kazakhstan. She noted
accumulating research indicating that women in these ancient cultures
sometimes "had an active role in warfare and in the political structure."
But she cautioned against "ascribing more to the women of these
cultures than actually existed."
In the article in Archaeology magazine, Dr. Davis-Kimball said the
excavations showed that the nomad women seemed "to have controlled
much of the wealth, performed rituals for their families and clan, rode
horseback and possibly hunted saiga, a steppe antelope, and other
small game." In times of crisis, she wrote, the women "took to their
saddles, bows and arrows ready, to defend their animals, pastures and
clan."