Book Review: “The Amazons” by Adrienne Mayor

The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor

If you want to know why you want to read this book, check out Natalie Haynes’ podcast on the topic (“The time that Natalie and Edith talked about shoes”)[1].  (I’ll wait while you listen…. : – ))

I know of Dr. Mayor from her fascinating earlier work on Greek and Roman understanding of fossils [2].  (Griffins!) 

This newer book (in the UK, this book is titled “Encyclopedia Amazonia”, which I love!) follows her general modus operandi; synthesizing twenty first century archaeology and anthropology with classical Greek and Roman sources.  The trick is to separate out the facts underlying the misunderstandings and fantasies in the sources.  In this case, Mayor also includes related materials from the folk histories of the Steppes, and from ancient Persian, Indian, and Chinese sources. A scholarly masterpiece.

The result is a coherent picture with a simple conclusion:  the Greek stories of “Amazons”, tribes of warrior women who were “the equal of men”, were based on real life tribes that lived just outside the Greek world.

“Between Greece and China stretched the vast homeland of nomadic horsewomen archers, the equals of men, whose heroic lives and deeds inspired awe, fear, respect, and desire in all who knew them.”

([3], p. 429)

This conclusion has long been rejected by conventional Western (male) scholars.  Women warriors?  Pure fantasy.  Women leaders?  Impossible.  Women “the equal of men”?  Perverted nonsense!

At the heart of the current story is new evidence from DNA tests that prove beyond argument that there really were female warriors in this region.  In the past, burials of people dressed in armor with weapons were assumed to be male warriors.  New evidence indicates that many of these honored heroes were female.  Indeed, in some regions, 20% or more of the buried warriors discovered were female.

Furthermore, the archaeological materials closely match the clothing, weapons, and other details from Greek art and writing, as well as later Roman, Persian, and Chinese sources. They also are consistent with the historical and contemporary life of nomads who lived in the area.

These nomadic peoples were expert horsewomen and men and expert archers with characteristic short compound bows.  They hunted and fought with a whole kit of weapons, including a characteristic battle ax and curved shields. Men and women both wore trousers (unlike the “bare-legged, skirt-wearing Greeks”, as Mayor snarks ([3], p. 190)).  Men and women had similar training, and in many tribes women were equally powerful as men. 

So, “Amazons” were real, or at least based on real people who the Greeks actually met, traded, and fought–just as the Greek histories and travel stories said all along.  Of course, not everything the Greeks and others say about them is strictly factual.  Indeed, the Greek and Roman fascination with Amazons is an interesting part of the story.  As Mayor says, Amazons inspired both fear and desire.

For the Greeks, Amazons were very troubling, indeed.  These women were independent and powerful, not to mention armed and dangerous—nearly the opposite of proper Greek women.  This transgressive existence was threatening, but also deeply attractive.  This may explain why Amazons are the second most popular subject on painted vases, not to mention appearing in numerous stories.

Yet, as the Greeks interacted with the real trouser wearing horsewomen, the stories evolved from a standard “Greeks-kill-Amazons” story into more realistic tales of cultural contact.  Indeed, Alexander the Great is said to have dallied with an Amazon princess for two weeks—at her suggestion.  Mayor observes that this story illustrates “just how deeply embedded the prickly, enticing idea of Amazons was for the Greeks. That a bold, adventurous man might hope to find a companion in an equally strong woman of action was a perennially thrilling prospect.” ([3], p. 338)

Similar evidence is found from all the surrounding people who encountered these tribes, in Persia, India, China, and even Egypt. Mayor gives us detail after detail.  (This book is truly encyclopedic.)

For example, let’s consider, “Who invented trousers?” (Chapter 12)  Why, the Amazons did.

Trousers are obviously useful for horse riders, though the Greeks mocked them.  Mayor psychoanalyses these skirt-boys, wondering “Why were trousers so disturbing for Greeks?” ([3], p. 195 )  At least part of the issue was that trousers are uni-sex, and conceal the gender of the person.  (Greeks of the time wore loose robes with no underwear—you could see everyone’s body.)

So, trousers were a symptom of the larger problem Amazons posed for classical Greeks and Romans.  The horse peoples’ societies had much more equal between men and women, Indeed, to Greeks it seemed that Amazon women behaved like (Greek) men.  This was both threatening and exciting to them.

Other cultures had their own challenges from their fierce “Amazon” neighbors, though everybody traded, intermarried, and hired Amazons as fighters and leaders.  Indeed, the extreme gender politics of the Greeks and Romans are cultural outliers, a dubious gift to our own cultures.

By now, we all know that women have always played important roles,  even in societies with male dominated hierarchical cultures.  So we aren’t surprised that free ranging, tough living nomads had powerful and independent women.  I mean, women and horses. Duh!

I’ll note that it is clear that the author herself certainly is excited and attracted by these powerful and independent horse warriors of the past.  : – )

Well done.

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1. Natalie Haynes, Penthesilea, Amazon Warrior Queen, in Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics. 2020, BBC Radio 4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jfpc
2. Adrienne Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000.
3. Adrienne Mayor, The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014.

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