num_pages: 320
description: 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 worlds 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 Asiafrom the edge of the ancient Greek world to the borderlands of Chinato discover the truth about the truth about these women whose legend has resonated over the centuries.
language: English
title: Searching for the Amazons: The Real Warrior Women of the Ancient World
publisher: Pegasus Books