From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Amazon warriors
Date: 16 Oct 92 06:17:33 GMT
Organization: LLNL

In article <2ADB9475.15006@news.service.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:

: It's thought that the word comes from a-mazos, which is Greek for no-
: breasted.  Amazon women were "supposed" to have cut off their right
: breast to string and shoot a bow better -- a blatantly male-centered
: deduction.  (Would a woman say that Mongolian horsemen were eunuchs just
: as obviously because not having a penis would make riding a horse
: easier?)  As an example (and I've mentioned this before), take me.  I
: am dead center on the gaussian as far as cup size goes, and I shot low
: 40's last time I pulled a bow.  (For those of you who are morbidly
: curious, that means a B-cup.)  Where then did the myth come from?

	Well, the favorite theory I've seen is that the word was
borrowed from another language, where it had a different meaning (I've
seen at least two candidates). But in Greek, it would sound like
"breastless", and the story of cutting off breasts would be invented
to account for it. 

	And what level of performance is "low-40's"?

: There are extant in that area of the world many statues of deities with
: a male right half, and a female left half.  Guess what?  They don't have
: right breasts!  Add in a little sweaty-palmed imagination, and you've
: got yourself a story.

	I'm afraid I've never seen any one of these. Where can I look?

: Unfortunately for the turd on soc.feminism (I thought more people would
: know about this, so I didn't answer before this), historically
: corroborated examples of female warriors abound, especially in northern
: Europe.  I don't have Rosalind Miles's _The Women's History of the
: World_ here, but examples are there.  Roman men were scared shitless of
: Gallic women, and Celtic and English women scared them worse.  There's a
: line somewhere by a contemporary Roman historian that runs something
: like, "An entire Roman legion would not survive a single Gaul were he to
: yell to his wife for help.  With huge sallow arms, she administers kicks
: and blows as from a catapult."  Celtic prisoners of war were known to
: offer their obeisance to the Emperor's WIFE, and not the Emperor
: himself.  I'll have to get a copy of the book before I can give you
: more, but anyone who thinks that there are NO historically corroborated
: exampels of warrior women hasn't looked hard enough.

	I wonder how many of the more far-fetched of these purported
examples are hyperbole, although I certainly agree on the existence of
examples of fighting women.

	One must certainly ask why warfare has been almost universally
a male specialty. I hope I don't get labeled a male chauvinist pig for
some of these speculations, but I suspect is because men are usually
stronger than women and also because men can produce children a lot
more easily than women can, and are less tied down as a result (Yes, I
know the natural distributions overlap, but what are the _averages_?).

	The principal exceptions are the result of technological
equalizers. The Sarmatians, whom I mentioned in a previous post, were
a nomadic tribe, so they had their horses to help out, and they could
shoot arrows while riding. In modern times, guns have become
available, which have high killing power without presenting a great
physical burden.
Newsgroups: alt.pagan