Searching for the Amazons: The Real Warrior Women of the Ancient World

by John Man

Overview

A deeply researched and sweeping history that redefines our understanding of the Amazons and their culture, tracking the ancient legend into the modern world and examining its significance today.

Since the time of the ancient Greeks we have been fascinated by accounts of the Amazons, an elusive tribe of hard-fighting, horse-riding female warriors. Equal to men in battle, legends claimed they cut off their right breasts to improve their archery skills and routinely killed their male children to purify their ranks.

For centuries people believed in their existence and attempted to trace their origins. Artists and poets celebrated their battles and wrote of Amazonia. Spanish explorers, carrying these tales to South America, thought they lived in the forests of the world’s greatest river, and named it after them. In the absence of evidence, we eventually reasoned away their existence, concluding that these powerful, sexually liberated female soldiers must have been the fantastical invention of Greek myth and storytelling. Until now.

Following decades of new research and a series of groundbreaking archeological discoveries, we now know these powerful warrior queens did indeed exist. In Searching for the Amazons, John Man travels to the grasslands of Central Asia—from the edge of the ancient Greek world to the borderlands of China—to discover the truth about the truth about these women whose legend has resonated over the centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681776750
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	02/27/2018
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	785,487
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

John Man is a historian specializing in Asia and the nature of leadership. John's books have been published in over twenty languages around the world and include bestselling biographies of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, and Attila the Hun, as well as histories of the Great Wall of China and the Mongolian Empire. He lives in England.

Table of Contents

Map: The Realms of the Amazons viii

Introduction: Changing Myths, Emerging Truths xi

1 A Legend and Its Meaning 1

2 Close Encounters of the Scythian Kind 29

3 A Short Chapter on Breasts 43

4 Treasures in Bone and Gold 51

5 The Ice Maiden 79

6 Sarmatians: The Roots of the Legend 93

7 The Return of the Mounted Archer 105

8 Amazonia: From Dreams to a New Reality 123

9 A Painting, Two Plays and a Suicide 159

10 The Amazons of 'Black Sparta' 191

11 Amazons with Wings: Russia's Night Witches 213

12 Wonder Woman: The Secret Origins of an Amazon Princess 241

Epilogue: Halfway to Amazonia 263

Bibliography 275

Acknowledgements 281

Picture Acknowledgements 283

Index 285

Editorial Reviews

11/13/2017
In this work, inspired by the superhero Wonder Woman, historian and travel writer Man (Saladin) delves into the rich historical foundations undergirding the myth of the Amazons. The result is a quirky if uneven book. Man wonders, “What on earth was so appealing about the Amazons that Greeks should have been obsessed by them?” Why has that obsession endured to this day? To answer, Man explores fashion, symbolism, and the factual history of the Amazons. In the first part of the book, he recounts archeological excavations with the zeal of a field researcher, discussing the discovery of remains of warrior women from Scythia in the late 19th century and other significant finds that followed in the 20th century. Man then shows how the Amazon myth seeped into the art, literature, and popular culture of the Greeks and subsequent Western societies over hundreds of years. The chapters on female warriors in West Africa and female Soviet pilots in WWII are presented as examples of Amazonian symbolism, though exactly how they fit isn’t explained. After a brief history of Wonder Woman, Man concludes with an account of an online search for modern Amazons, discovering the revolutionary Kurdish Women’s Defense Units in Rojava, Syria. Man’s breezy style is engaging, but it’s no substitute for a deeper engagement with the subject. Illus. (Feb.) Correction: A previous version of this review listed an incomplete title for the book.

Publishers Weekly

"Absorbing and beautifully written. A thrilling account. "

The Guardian

An inherently fascinating and impressively informative study.

Midwest Book Review

"One could ask for no better storyteller or analyst than John Man. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

2017-11-13
Man (Saladin: The Life, The Legend and the Islamic Empire, 2015, etc.) debunks the ancient myths and legendary nonsense surrounding a race of women warriors.The so-called Amazons left no pottery or jewelry and certainly no settlement that could be excavated. However, there are tombs yielding immense treasures and information, particularly in Tuva, now a semi-autonomous region of Russian. This was the heartland of the Scythians, the people most likely to have produced the Amazons. The region boasts a wide assortment of burial mounds, and the kurgans, or tombs, are evidence of the violent lives lived by the women—and the men—over some 1,500 years (roughly 1000 B.C.E. to 500 C.E.). There absolutely were women warriors who rode horses and fought like men, but the author smoothly and efficiently debunks the many myths associated with them—e.g., the killing of male children or the removal of a girl's right breast to facilitate the shooting of a bow. It was mainly the Greeks who proliferated the myths about this fierce race of women; in fact, they were obsessed with them. It was a fashion in art to follow mythology, and the Amazons served as a cautionary tale, the symbol of a danger to family and state. Add in xenophobia, and they were the ultimate threat. As the Greeks saw it, it took real heroes, like Achilles, and help from the gods to defeat these warriors, adding to Greek glory. Due to Greek influence, the Amazons were lodged in Europe's consciousness, advanced by exploration in the new world of South America (a tribe just over the next mountain…), and set in place by novels, Wonder Woman, and other elements of pop culture. "Wonder Woman is even more Amazonian that the Amazons of Greek legend," writes the author. "[She] is not about to be defeated or bedded, even by superheroes."A great historical resource about a mysterious people that also shows how women, through the ages, have gathered strength from each other and continue to do so today.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More