Well, a tribe of amazons, for sure absurd. But im willing to bet scythian women warriors were far more dangerous than any hellenic, persian, or phoenician. It took the roman machine to even start to conquer the sarmations, and yet the huns and other steppe tribes, with women warriors, sacked the west. God, I sound like some militant feminist :( please disprove me for manliness sake. Ancient germanic tribes speak of sarmations like romans spoke of germans. There is fear in derogatory racism.
If there was a femanine dominated tribe with female warriors it is more likely by modern terms that it would have been a matriachal dominated society it could have been that the amazons was based on the turkish ethos of the woman being the source of power within the home ect. It is very much a greek trait to romantasise with insults their opponents when they win so it could be the amazons was greeks saying that the turks where whipped little girls
@lindybeige I agree with you the point I was trying to make was the greek hummor saying the male turkish warriors where whipped little girls because their women where in charge of them
For what it's worth, I recall reading on...cracked, I think... that the word 'Amazon' wasn't Greek at all, it was a foreign name that just happened to sound like their translation for "without breast" and that's where the idea came from. Which makes a lot more sense considering the reasons you mentioned.
Great video man! Thanks! Still, to make a couple of counter points - Thracians were NOT barbarians. That is a common historical misconception/deliberate lie propagated. Secondly, I don't know about Amazons, but there are records of the classical era where Greek women DID fight (against the Persians in Marathon for instance). Granted, not ALL women. But a certain woman poet whose statue was made depicting her in full armor, stepping on her poetry books is a good "sample" of such events...
@mariuslupercus I think you are wrong about women at Marathon, and the Thracians were barbarians - they wore trousers and they didn't speak Greek, which makes them barbarians.
I believe what we are seeing is the creation of legends from vague truths. Just like jesus walked on water, in reality he probably spilled a glass of water which got chinese whispered into the legendary act. So in this case we have tribes of warrior females who mutilate themselves and rape men (sounds quite fun to me...but anyhow). What probably started off a one unfortunate traveller coming up against one unnaturally aggressive female and the story grew from there.
I think Amazons were a concept derived form the steppe Sarmatians and Scythian , who were mostly nomads and in their culture women often accompanied men into battle.The greek society was highly sexist and demonized them by fabricating myths of all women nations that oppressed men and what would happen to their precious culture if women were given any more freedom.
The people of the steps lived a hard life. From Hungarian history we know that when one tribe lost too many man in a campaign the women had two choices: Join a brother tribe or gain man from the brother tribes.
The free women were also trained in horse archery, maybe not in battle formation but were thought how to use a bow as men did.
It is not impossible that a scythian tribe lost too man, leaving the women to fight until the men population is regained.
"The idea of a warrior nation was absolutely utterly against all that the Greeks understood as culture."
I hate the impression like that of "300" have been creating, but... You'd be extremely hard pressed that Sparta was not a warrior nation. And you'd be insane to argue it was not a warrior culture. I mean, this is a city-state where male children were taken from homes to start training in the ways of the Spartan military.
@matchesburn The Spartans may have been a military focused culture but the entire nation was not 'warrior'. It was made up by a large amount Helots, considered lesser than the Spartans and were captured or conquered men from the surrounding area. Whether they were bluntly 'slaves' or very low citizens is debated, but they were not trained purely as soldiers like the Spartans (they did however sometimes fight). So this would be reason to believe Sparta was not an entirely warrior nation :)
Perhaps someone encountered some slim beardless Asiatics and mistook them for women with no breasts! Not that I subscribe to the notion that every legend has a grain of truth to it, sometimes people just make stuff up.
In times when the battlefield was not 2 continents over, but in marching distance; as a man-at-arms and possibly husband&father, one of the first things I would do is to equip wifey with at least a dagger and show her how to use it.
Say after a devestating and brutal battle or siege, the remaining victors go about sacking the city and recreational rape only to be "individually"beaten by the women armed with hubby's spare sword to proverbial frying pan.
i think it is very likely that Amazons did exist. But I do not think it is entirely ture. I have heard of that the Amazons did have men in the tribe but very little and would take care of house work
Sometimes some men like to sit there and wonder how life would be like when tall, lithe and muscular women conk you over the head take you back home and then take turns raping you for the rest of your life.
It was just a tribe or people where the women ran things, fought, etc, and the men were the domociles who took care of kids, kept house, etc.. One of the stories of Troy talked of the Amazons who helped the Trojans towards the end. And they got their butts kicked!
@lindybeige I seem to remember someone (Boronowsky?) writing about how widely ideas of what was men's work and what was women's work varied across cultures, with warfare being the singular exception that was masculine in every culture he'd studied. It probably goes back to males being more expendable in a biological sense.
@ShanksAndy There are many. Childcare is woman's work in all cultures. Making musical instruments is male work. Jobs involving a lot of solitary time (lighthouse keeper, long distance lorry driving, watchman etc.) are male work. Dangerous work is male. Things to do with cloth and clothes tend to be female. Cooking is an interesting one in that it is split sort of evenly - some culture only men cook, some only women, and many split. Cooking and distributing large amounts of meat is male.
@lindybeige And even in Western culture where cooking is generally seen as feminine does the manly meat cooking rule hold. The thing I read was a tangent to the main thesis, so it doesn't surprise me that it was exaggerated. I can see some of the things you've mentioned having biological bases (dangerous work to expendable males, childcare to those who bear and nurse children etc). It's the tailoring and instruments I find interesting - I can't even think of a tenuous biological reason.
@ShanksAndy Musical instruments is particularly strong in the showing off of skill department. Women are more interested in the way people dress. Indeed I have a theory that a lot of etiquette (esp. dress etiquette) was invented by high-status women.
@animematt why would people bury perfectly good sword ? why would people burn a perfectly good wife on a funeral pyre or bury perfectly good slaves ? because apparently you would use it in afterlife.
@lindybeige If wikipedia's to be believed, Hippocrates wrote about the without breast thing, so the idea's fairly old. I've also seen references to ancient greek works talking about "androgenes" who are male on the left and female on the right (or vice versa), with a quote that "one half of the breast is as a man's, that they may work unimpeded". The ancient Greeks seem to have been really hung up on the inefficiencies of breasts.
The ancient Greeks were the founders of the "He-man Woman Haters Club" so it would stand to reason that if they say a nation with even an approximation of women's equality - the Celts for example - they would have blown it out of proportion. Women owning land? Women out of the house AND riding horses? MADNESS! The Persians had some high status women which must have given the Greeks fits. Come to think of it their reaction might have been in line with modern Afghanistan.
especially that whole myth is just fantasy, especially as the greek bows were generally very small recurves,so the string, when you draw it back to your mouth or ear, dosn't even stretch across the breast.
Dear Lloyd, I don't know if you are involved much in the computer war gaming scene, but have you should check out a project called "0 A.D." I think all your knowledge about Ancient Greek and Roman fighting might be tickled by it.
You get massive thumbs up for using "unlikely" instead of "impossible." Thank you for not being an abominable, self-opinionated idiot and allowing wiggle room for other viewpoints. Good on you.
didn't these women who were buried with weapons in tombs (sarmatians, i believe) have skeletons with so called scarring from tools, which showed that these scarrings healed and were not caused post-mortem? i remember learning this from college history class, and yes we also talked about that breast ironing part as well we tackled the ancient world :-)
There was actually a kingdom in Africa (west Africa, I think) called Dahomey that had an elite military unit of female soldiers called Mino. They were used quite successfully against other kingdoms, and even fought the French Foreign Legion to a standstill for a while. It would seem that in linear warfare at close range, bare tits are a pretty effective survival aid (the Mino were also effective, well trained soldiers). But then of course the French came back with machine guns.
@MisdirectedSasha Elite bodyguards of all-female soldiers are very high-status things for a ruler to have. The man (usually a man) is saying "Look what I can afford to endanger!" Colonel Gaddafi had one. A small military unit and an entire tribe are very different things, though.
@lindybeige Oh, of course. I thought it was a pretty good case study of a tribe where some women fought, though. Actually, joining the Mino was often a punishment for adultery, disobedience, etc. Sort of like an all-female, elite penal legion.
I can coincide with the amazon stories as myths perpetrated by greeks to portray the sythians and thracians as such, since Celtic culture (as thracian/sythian were a part of ) treated women with equality and in some cases put in political power while the greeks and romans treated women as property.
I wondered about this for the longest time, and abut 6 months ago looked into it via the internet and after a few hours of surfing (I'm a fast reader,) found that like you say, there doesn't seem to be any real evidence to support the existence of this tribe at all.
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but some hard evidence to support them would be interesting.
You said that Greecs disliked warrior cultures? I mean the Spartans (not referring to the over the top 300 movie version) did were very warrior/violent culture focused.
I can imagine that Athens and its allies would have 'disliked' such things but not the Spartans and its conquered subjects.
@lindybeige I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding here. You said that the Greeks didn't like "warrior cultures" instead of having said that they didn't like "female warrior cultures." Unless you meant to say that the greeks were not warlike, which doesn't make sense.
@ArtiKard Just checked this. Yes, you are right, I was talking about female warrior nations (Amazons) and in this sentence did not include the word 'female', but that's what I meant. Most Greeks weren't lovers of male warrior cultures either, of course, because such nations are a threat to all around them. The Spartans were not surprisingly unpopular with most of Hellas. How would you like a load of nutters like them living in the next valley?
@ArtiKard I can't remember where the quote is from, but often when the 'Greeks' would identify themselves as a whole they would not excluded the Spartans
I don't believe in amazons, though I'm tentatively open to the possibility that some Scythian and/or Sarmatian women carried arms and armour: Some khurgans have been excavated to reveal females in battle gear (which could very well be ceremonial).
Lloyd, Masculinity is a construct, it is just so wrong and just so last year, and frankly I have had it right to the tits with your masculinist chest beating.
Now then, would it be appropriate to name an Amazon soothsayer born in a time of gender based social turmoil "Sybille Unbreast" ?
In any case, if the Amazons ever did exist ...as you say in so many words...they went tits up.
ps....as far as we know the first descriptions of these 'breastless warrirors' were simply confused Europeans describing blokes with their lower tackle tied underneath them (still done in some tribes...well at least one). They thought they were ladies...they were gents ;)
Sir, I love your channel, and I will stay subscribed to it until the zombie apocalypse. However in regards to this video...How do you explain Wonder Woman.
Besides, what a horrible choice of mythos to attempt to disprove, I for one would like to keep my fantasies of beautiful warrior women kidnapping my forefathers to relentlessly have sex with them until they physically broke down and was discarded...
Oh come now, a lack of evidence doesn't really prove anything... If science for instant worked like that humanity would never had invented anything...
That they was not ONLY women in the tribe, sure, but there might have been a tribe where only the women fought for all we know, I mean... the amazon was largely un-explored through this entire period.
My case is that a lack of evidence doesn't disprove something, only evidence to the contrary can accomplish that feat.
@88Kamikaze69 The onus is on the people who insist that the Amazons did exist to prove that they did, not on me to prove that they did not. having some experience of what it is to be human, I find the Amazon myth unlikely to be entirely true. I do in this video suggest that the myth might be based on something, however, such as a tribe encountered in which some women sometimes fought.
I completely agree that it is highly unlikely that an amazonian, females only warrior tribe ever excisted but to be tedious here you did at one point in the video claim that "There couldn't have been such a female warrior society" at another point "No, there werent any amazones" and at the ending "there was no amazon tribe, no tribe where there were only women and they all fought together".
But on a more serious note, no I dont believe it myself but I love the idea of it ^^
@lindybeige Well the burden of proof is not on you to disprove, but you are obligated to provide evidence against the plausibility of such claims. Without plausibility, the claims must be false by definition.
Please tell me the remark in there about the amazon's exploratory status was sarcasm or humor... last i checked (5 years ago) the old world had very minimal if any contact with the new world....
@88Kamikaze69 I think you got something mixed up there... The Amazons didn't live along the Amazon in South America. They lived in the Balkans and around Greece, and that area was very well explored during that time. ;)
@88Kamikaze69 In history (and anthropology for that matter) you cannot make a statement without evidence supporting this particular statement. No opinion or hypothesis has any value whatsoever if you cannot build it on tangible foundations of facts.
@88Kamikaze69 Well in fact science works exactly that way.
If you can´t proof something with collected data it does not exist. Departing from that rule leads to such "funny" inventions like "the ether" the fictive material light moves through.
On the other hand you can´t proof that something does not exist, because proofing is all about collecting data and you can just collect data from something that exists!
I just learned some things about Amazons, the most surprising of which is that some people think they were real! The thing is I don't ever remember having to be told they weren't real in the same way I didn't have to be told the people on TV weren't trapped in this little box in my house. Its something you just piece together without even thinking about it.
I never paid much attention to this one and always thought - probably because of some of the "historic" games I play like Empires: Total War that they were just some sort of "speciality" group, much like Gaddafi's however-many-strong bodyguard of female models.
Not to mention, from a pure practical perspective: Imagine you have two tribes of people, one in which the men fight, and one in which the women fight. If they clash and half of each tribes warriors die (a horribly bloody confrontation), the one with the warrior-men can still expand its population at the same rate (provided none of its women die in the war and polygamy isn't out of the question), while the one with warrior-women is severely handicapped to produce more warriors.
@guiltybystander77 Yes and there is another practical aspect in that men tend be unencumbered by pregnancy and breastfeeding, tend to have greater upper body strength, and more aggressive instincts to go with it. It might make sense though sometimes to have the women armed as a last line of defense while the men are out raiding which is probably where the legend originates.
Sometimes it feels like somewhat reasonable people are fighting a losing battle Lindy, I remember one of my friends recommending the movie "300" to me on the basis that I was interested in history... yeah that shows the level of comprehension of ancient history of most people. They watch shows on spike tv (not sure if you have it there in the UK) and imediatly feel that they are experts on any given topic.
Well, a tribe of amazons, for sure absurd. But im willing to bet scythian women warriors were far more dangerous than any hellenic, persian, or phoenician. It took the roman machine to even start to conquer the sarmations, and yet the huns and other steppe tribes, with women warriors, sacked the west. God, I sound like some militant feminist :( please disprove me for manliness sake. Ancient germanic tribes speak of sarmations like romans spoke of germans. There is fear in derogatory racism.
jdfox37 2 weeks ago
If there was a femanine dominated tribe with female warriors it is more likely by modern terms that it would have been a matriachal dominated society it could have been that the amazons was based on the turkish ethos of the woman being the source of power within the home ect. It is very much a greek trait to romantasise with insults their opponents when they win so it could be the amazons was greeks saying that the turks where whipped little girls
OriginalOwner777 2 weeks ago
@OriginalOwner777 In Matriarchal societies, men still do the fighting. Women are not stupid.
lindybeige 2 weeks ago
@lindybeige I agree with you the point I was trying to make was the greek hummor saying the male turkish warriors where whipped little girls because their women where in charge of them
OriginalOwner777 2 weeks ago
So, to sum up, ancient porn; Not as good.
TheWarlordPaul 4 weeks ago
For what it's worth, I recall reading on...cracked, I think... that the word 'Amazon' wasn't Greek at all, it was a foreign name that just happened to sound like their translation for "without breast" and that's where the idea came from. Which makes a lot more sense considering the reasons you mentioned.
sPitternaut 1 month ago
Women have no chance vs men. Face the truth. Nough said.
KrutoyPostowoy 2 months ago
Great video man! Thanks! Still, to make a couple of counter points - Thracians were NOT barbarians. That is a common historical misconception/deliberate lie propagated. Secondly, I don't know about Amazons, but there are records of the classical era where Greek women DID fight (against the Persians in Marathon for instance). Granted, not ALL women. But a certain woman poet whose statue was made depicting her in full armor, stepping on her poetry books is a good "sample" of such events...
mariuslupercus 2 months ago
@mariuslupercus I think you are wrong about women at Marathon, and the Thracians were barbarians - they wore trousers and they didn't speak Greek, which makes them barbarians.
lindybeige 2 months ago
How do you explain Amazon dot com then smart guy?
AGuzmanAcha 3 months ago 8
@AGuzmanAcha Damn - stumped.
lindybeige 3 months ago 8
I believe what we are seeing is the creation of legends from vague truths. Just like jesus walked on water, in reality he probably spilled a glass of water which got chinese whispered into the legendary act. So in this case we have tribes of warrior females who mutilate themselves and rape men (sounds quite fun to me...but anyhow). What probably started off a one unfortunate traveller coming up against one unnaturally aggressive female and the story grew from there.
HazelArchery 3 months ago
0:53 i laugh a bit sorry
josefjob 3 months ago
I think Amazons were a concept derived form the steppe Sarmatians and Scythian , who were mostly nomads and in their culture women often accompanied men into battle.The greek society was highly sexist and demonized them by fabricating myths of all women nations that oppressed men and what would happen to their precious culture if women were given any more freedom.
sushanalone 3 months ago
Thank you. Now my dream of being captured by Amazons for the purpose of forced breading is dead.
thecutthatneverheals 4 months ago 5
@nivenheim
The people of the steps lived a hard life. From Hungarian history we know that when one tribe lost too many man in a campaign the women had two choices: Join a brother tribe or gain man from the brother tribes.
The free women were also trained in horse archery, maybe not in battle formation but were thought how to use a bow as men did.
It is not impossible that a scythian tribe lost too man, leaving the women to fight until the men population is regained.
Attilahollo9 5 months ago
@nivenheim It's possible, but without any evidence, it remains just a thought.
TheSirPrise 5 months ago
The text box at the end drove the point home very nicely.
MerlinsJester 7 months ago
"The idea of a warrior nation was absolutely utterly against all that the Greeks understood as culture."
I hate the impression like that of "300" have been creating, but... You'd be extremely hard pressed that Sparta was not a warrior nation. And you'd be insane to argue it was not a warrior culture. I mean, this is a city-state where male children were taken from homes to start training in the ways of the Spartan military.
matchesburn 7 months ago
@matchesburn Did I not have the term 'female' or 'all-woman' in there?
lindybeige 7 months ago 8
@lindybeige
No, no you did not.
matchesburn 7 months ago
@matchesburn The Spartans may have been a military focused culture but the entire nation was not 'warrior'. It was made up by a large amount Helots, considered lesser than the Spartans and were captured or conquered men from the surrounding area. Whether they were bluntly 'slaves' or very low citizens is debated, but they were not trained purely as soldiers like the Spartans (they did however sometimes fight). So this would be reason to believe Sparta was not an entirely warrior nation :)
Kharkidevil 3 months ago
Perhaps someone encountered some slim beardless Asiatics and mistook them for women with no breasts! Not that I subscribe to the notion that every legend has a grain of truth to it, sometimes people just make stuff up.
MrMonkeybat 7 months ago
Very true... Good luck with more videos.
tomcat2222 8 months ago
The greeks got good imaginations, I like.
Keasri 8 months ago
In times when the battlefield was not 2 continents over, but in marching distance; as a man-at-arms and possibly husband&father, one of the first things I would do is to equip wifey with at least a dagger and show her how to use it.
Say after a devestating and brutal battle or siege, the remaining victors go about sacking the city and recreational rape only to be "individually"beaten by the women armed with hubby's spare sword to proverbial frying pan.
Leaving a city run byWomenUntilTheNextGen
AngronIsAngry 8 months ago
I believe in Amazons! But only Dahomey ones! Amazons of Asia minor...not so much :P
Fastwinstondoom 8 months ago
i think it is very likely that Amazons did exist. But I do not think it is entirely ture. I have heard of that the Amazons did have men in the tribe but very little and would take care of house work
1969wrestling 8 months ago
Sometimes some men like to sit there and wonder how life would be like when tall, lithe and muscular women conk you over the head take you back home and then take turns raping you for the rest of your life.
DeusExDraconian 8 months ago
amazon women and centaurs? sounds like a porno to me lol
painsey 8 months ago
It was just a tribe or people where the women ran things, fought, etc, and the men were the domociles who took care of kids, kept house, etc.. One of the stories of Troy talked of the Amazons who helped the Trojans towards the end. And they got their butts kicked!
DMEII 8 months ago
@DMEII No society anywhere on Earth has ever been found in which the women fight and the men stay at home to look after children. People have looked.
lindybeige 8 months ago 14
@lindybeige I seem to remember someone (Boronowsky?) writing about how widely ideas of what was men's work and what was women's work varied across cultures, with warfare being the singular exception that was masculine in every culture he'd studied. It probably goes back to males being more expendable in a biological sense.
ShanksAndy 8 months ago
@ShanksAndy There are many. Childcare is woman's work in all cultures. Making musical instruments is male work. Jobs involving a lot of solitary time (lighthouse keeper, long distance lorry driving, watchman etc.) are male work. Dangerous work is male. Things to do with cloth and clothes tend to be female. Cooking is an interesting one in that it is split sort of evenly - some culture only men cook, some only women, and many split. Cooking and distributing large amounts of meat is male.
lindybeige 8 months ago
@lindybeige And even in Western culture where cooking is generally seen as feminine does the manly meat cooking rule hold. The thing I read was a tangent to the main thesis, so it doesn't surprise me that it was exaggerated. I can see some of the things you've mentioned having biological bases (dangerous work to expendable males, childcare to those who bear and nurse children etc). It's the tailoring and instruments I find interesting - I can't even think of a tenuous biological reason.
ShanksAndy 8 months ago
@ShanksAndy Musical instruments is particularly strong in the showing off of skill department. Women are more interested in the way people dress. Indeed I have a theory that a lot of etiquette (esp. dress etiquette) was invented by high-status women.
lindybeige 8 months ago
@DMEII ahhhh, kinda like we have today, women go to work and men stay at home taking care of the children, hahahaha just joking around.
letshavewhat1111 8 months ago
amazons are real , they even had river named after them. lol ancient porn .
sewagedweller 8 months ago
"It's ancient porn"
I laughed out loud.
Burying with weapons....Why put a perfectly good sword in the ground?
animematt 8 months ago
@animematt why would people bury perfectly good sword ? why would people burn a perfectly good wife on a funeral pyre or bury perfectly good slaves ? because apparently you would use it in afterlife.
sewagedweller 8 months ago
@sewagedweller Status, status, and status. Funerals are for the living. Look how grand MY father/mother was!
lindybeige 8 months ago
I saw a picture of the Greeks fighting the Amazon and the Greeks seemed 2 be winning buy quite some.
44SCB 8 months ago
You mean I won't get captured by Amazons and be sentenced to death by Snoo-snoo?
You have made me a sad man.
WarbossGorgutz 8 months ago
Sorry but I can't believe you... Next thing you're gonna tell us that Xena the warrior princess is a made-up character...
Madgobo 8 months ago 18
i heard that the word was actually hamazan but the h was dropped giving it the same pronunciation as amazon
scottbaioisdead 8 months ago
@scottbaioisdead That wouldn't fit the meaning of "without breast". Greek words meaning 'without X' start with a- or an-.
lindybeige 8 months ago
@lindybeige yes exactly, the without breast thing was added later, because of the pronunciation of the original arabic
scottbaioisdead 8 months ago
@scottbaioisdead Interesting.
lindybeige 8 months ago
@lindybeige If wikipedia's to be believed, Hippocrates wrote about the without breast thing, so the idea's fairly old. I've also seen references to ancient greek works talking about "androgenes" who are male on the left and female on the right (or vice versa), with a quote that "one half of the breast is as a man's, that they may work unimpeded". The ancient Greeks seem to have been really hung up on the inefficiencies of breasts.
ShanksAndy 8 months ago
The ancient Greeks were the founders of the "He-man Woman Haters Club" so it would stand to reason that if they say a nation with even an approximation of women's equality - the Celts for example - they would have blown it out of proportion. Women owning land? Women out of the house AND riding horses? MADNESS! The Persians had some high status women which must have given the Greeks fits. Come to think of it their reaction might have been in line with modern Afghanistan.
colddrake80 8 months ago
It's just a lame excuse used by extreme feminists to justify their nonsense.
Crossbowman 8 months ago
'Because it's ancient porn': Best reason for anything.
Whitefang8128 8 months ago
especially that whole myth is just fantasy, especially as the greek bows were generally very small recurves,so the string, when you draw it back to your mouth or ear, dosn't even stretch across the breast.
300warrior300 8 months ago
Dear Lloyd, I don't know if you are involved much in the computer war gaming scene, but have you should check out a project called "0 A.D." I think all your knowledge about Ancient Greek and Roman fighting might be tickled by it.
MiRyRE 8 months ago
You get massive thumbs up for using "unlikely" instead of "impossible." Thank you for not being an abominable, self-opinionated idiot and allowing wiggle room for other viewpoints. Good on you.
SaitiOfTheSouth 8 months ago
didn't these women who were buried with weapons in tombs (sarmatians, i believe) have skeletons with so called scarring from tools, which showed that these scarrings healed and were not caused post-mortem? i remember learning this from college history class, and yes we also talked about that breast ironing part as well we tackled the ancient world :-)
6rasta6bhoy6 8 months ago
I think if you were my history teacher I would have got more than an E for sure.
leeham991 8 months ago
There was actually a kingdom in Africa (west Africa, I think) called Dahomey that had an elite military unit of female soldiers called Mino. They were used quite successfully against other kingdoms, and even fought the French Foreign Legion to a standstill for a while. It would seem that in linear warfare at close range, bare tits are a pretty effective survival aid (the Mino were also effective, well trained soldiers). But then of course the French came back with machine guns.
MisdirectedSasha 8 months ago
@MisdirectedSasha Elite bodyguards of all-female soldiers are very high-status things for a ruler to have. The man (usually a man) is saying "Look what I can afford to endanger!" Colonel Gaddafi had one. A small military unit and an entire tribe are very different things, though.
lindybeige 8 months ago 3
@lindybeige Oh, of course. I thought it was a pretty good case study of a tribe where some women fought, though. Actually, joining the Mino was often a punishment for adultery, disobedience, etc. Sort of like an all-female, elite penal legion.
MisdirectedSasha 8 months ago
@MisdirectedSasha
elite penal legion....I need to get my head out of the gutter today,
animematt 8 months ago
I can coincide with the amazon stories as myths perpetrated by greeks to portray the sythians and thracians as such, since Celtic culture (as thracian/sythian were a part of ) treated women with equality and in some cases put in political power while the greeks and romans treated women as property.
BUt a man can still dream....
ironflea 8 months ago
I wondered about this for the longest time, and abut 6 months ago looked into it via the internet and after a few hours of surfing (I'm a fast reader,) found that like you say, there doesn't seem to be any real evidence to support the existence of this tribe at all.
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but some hard evidence to support them would be interesting.
SwordsAndRavens 8 months ago
I never heard of anyone believing in amazons.
Perhaps I can rest easy now, that amazons are not less believable than fake planes or reptilian overlords.
Xandros999 8 months ago
You said that Greecs disliked warrior cultures? I mean the Spartans (not referring to the over the top 300 movie version) did were very warrior/violent culture focused.
I can imagine that Athens and its allies would have 'disliked' such things but not the Spartans and its conquered subjects.
ArtiKard 8 months ago
@ArtiKard I don't think I said that. They hd very strong ideas of the roles of men and women, and women's place was not on the battlefield.
lindybeige 8 months ago
@lindybeige I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding here. You said that the Greeks didn't like "warrior cultures" instead of having said that they didn't like "female warrior cultures." Unless you meant to say that the greeks were not warlike, which doesn't make sense.
danielitro1 8 months ago
@lindybeige You said at 2.28 'that the idea of a warrior nation was absolutely against all the Greecs understood as culture'
Maybe I'm just not seeing the context. I can understand that women warrior nations would be seen as barbaric by them because of rolemodels and such.
ArtiKard 8 months ago
@ArtiKard Just checked this. Yes, you are right, I was talking about female warrior nations (Amazons) and in this sentence did not include the word 'female', but that's what I meant. Most Greeks weren't lovers of male warrior cultures either, of course, because such nations are a threat to all around them. The Spartans were not surprisingly unpopular with most of Hellas. How would you like a load of nutters like them living in the next valley?
lindybeige 8 months ago
@ArtiKard - The Spartans were considered uncultured for a good reason.
gamegeek2 8 months ago
@ArtiKard I can't remember where the quote is from, but often when the 'Greeks' would identify themselves as a whole they would not excluded the Spartans
Cakevspie94 8 months ago
I don't believe in amazons, though I'm tentatively open to the possibility that some Scythian and/or Sarmatian women carried arms and armour: Some khurgans have been excavated to reveal females in battle gear (which could very well be ceremonial).
BenedictWolfe 8 months ago
I love your videos! Everything you have to say is so interesting.
redspade200 8 months ago
Also, no. Thrace is in the west. East of thrace is Dacia, East of Dacia is Mikra Skythia.
Unless my geography is missing certain aspects. I think a map would solve the problem for us.
jirisysklatoon 8 months ago
@jirisysklatoon Well, if you by that mean that Mikra Skythia is north of Thrace, you are right, how ever the evidence is rather scarse at best...
The best remains of women warriors in the Skythian areas is a mummy from russia, preserved with tattos weapons and all...
FaakedLillebror 8 months ago
Lloyd, Masculinity is a construct, it is just so wrong and just so last year, and frankly I have had it right to the tits with your masculinist chest beating.
Now then, would it be appropriate to name an Amazon soothsayer born in a time of gender based social turmoil "Sybille Unbreast" ?
In any case, if the Amazons ever did exist ...as you say in so many words...they went tits up.
youmaus 8 months ago
Greeks also called "Amazons" the women of the roxolani tribe that fought in war.
They weren't all women, byt the skythians sure had women in their armies. Troglodytes also lived in northeastern dacia.
I might be wrong, but that's just what I've come to learn over the months.
jirisysklatoon 8 months ago
Thank you. This is long over due.
Polymarkos 8 months ago
@Polymarkos Oh god you are so right.
Hobgoblin1975 8 months ago
ps....as far as we know the first descriptions of these 'breastless warrirors' were simply confused Europeans describing blokes with their lower tackle tied underneath them (still done in some tribes...well at least one). They thought they were ladies...they were gents ;)
Just throwing that out there for the sake of it.
wesmatron 8 months ago
In all honesty I thought Amazons were as mythological as Titans.
wesmatron 8 months ago
@firewishes Nice try.
lindybeige 8 months ago 4
Good vid. good points. favored :D
Stihius 8 months ago
Sir, I love your channel, and I will stay subscribed to it until the zombie apocalypse. However in regards to this video...How do you explain Wonder Woman.
Take care., and stay cool.
JockoBarbone 8 months ago
Besides, what a horrible choice of mythos to attempt to disprove, I for one would like to keep my fantasies of beautiful warrior women kidnapping my forefathers to relentlessly have sex with them until they physically broke down and was discarded...
88Kamikaze69 8 months ago
Oh come now, a lack of evidence doesn't really prove anything... If science for instant worked like that humanity would never had invented anything...
That they was not ONLY women in the tribe, sure, but there might have been a tribe where only the women fought for all we know, I mean... the amazon was largely un-explored through this entire period.
My case is that a lack of evidence doesn't disprove something, only evidence to the contrary can accomplish that feat.
88Kamikaze69 8 months ago
@88Kamikaze69 The onus is on the people who insist that the Amazons did exist to prove that they did, not on me to prove that they did not. having some experience of what it is to be human, I find the Amazon myth unlikely to be entirely true. I do in this video suggest that the myth might be based on something, however, such as a tribe encountered in which some women sometimes fought.
lindybeige 8 months ago 11
@lindybeige
I completely agree that it is highly unlikely that an amazonian, females only warrior tribe ever excisted but to be tedious here you did at one point in the video claim that "There couldn't have been such a female warrior society" at another point "No, there werent any amazones" and at the ending "there was no amazon tribe, no tribe where there were only women and they all fought together".
But on a more serious note, no I dont believe it myself but I love the idea of it ^^
88Kamikaze69 8 months ago
@lindybeige Well the burden of proof is not on you to disprove, but you are obligated to provide evidence against the plausibility of such claims. Without plausibility, the claims must be false by definition.
deathsminion25 8 months ago
@88Kamikaze69
Please tell me the remark in there about the amazon's exploratory status was sarcasm or humor... last i checked (5 years ago) the old world had very minimal if any contact with the new world....
metalfire13 8 months ago
@88Kamikaze69 I think you got something mixed up there... The Amazons didn't live along the Amazon in South America. They lived in the Balkans and around Greece, and that area was very well explored during that time. ;)
3027085 8 months ago
@88Kamikaze69 In history (and anthropology for that matter) you cannot make a statement without evidence supporting this particular statement. No opinion or hypothesis has any value whatsoever if you cannot build it on tangible foundations of facts.
Mehow80 8 months ago
@88Kamikaze69 Well in fact science works exactly that way.
If you can´t proof something with collected data it does not exist. Departing from that rule leads to such "funny" inventions like "the ether" the fictive material light moves through.
On the other hand you can´t proof that something does not exist, because proofing is all about collecting data and you can just collect data from something that exists!
Glaswalker1001 8 months ago
@88Kamikaze69 "the amazon was largely un-explored through this entire period."
the Amazon is in South America... see your problem here?
OskoreiMick 8 months ago
I just learned some things about Amazons, the most surprising of which is that some people think they were real! The thing is I don't ever remember having to be told they weren't real in the same way I didn't have to be told the people on TV weren't trapped in this little box in my house. Its something you just piece together without even thinking about it.
ASnakeintheGrass 8 months ago
A think some greeks may of had warrior cultures, maybe not.
dextrodemon 8 months ago
Yup you're right sir ;)
sanntta82 8 months ago
Maybe the fantasy started when some army encountered a town or such where most fighters were women due to all the men being in war?
PsykoOps 8 months ago
i have a question ... what are your thoughts on gurkas? i would lve to see a video abt them :D
ParkourNinjaKing 8 months ago
I never paid much attention to this one and always thought - probably because of some of the "historic" games I play like Empires: Total War that they were just some sort of "speciality" group, much like Gaddafi's however-many-strong bodyguard of female models.
Stupid games. Stupid Gaddafi.
TheAssist 8 months ago
Not to mention, from a pure practical perspective: Imagine you have two tribes of people, one in which the men fight, and one in which the women fight. If they clash and half of each tribes warriors die (a horribly bloody confrontation), the one with the warrior-men can still expand its population at the same rate (provided none of its women die in the war and polygamy isn't out of the question), while the one with warrior-women is severely handicapped to produce more warriors.
guiltybystander77 8 months ago
@guiltybystander77 Yes and there is another practical aspect in that men tend be unencumbered by pregnancy and breastfeeding, tend to have greater upper body strength, and more aggressive instincts to go with it. It might make sense though sometimes to have the women armed as a last line of defense while the men are out raiding which is probably where the legend originates.
MrMonkeybat 8 months ago
soo ppl who claim sarmations are amazons, are just apologists?
kaindrg 8 months ago
Wait, hold up, slow down, come to a stop right there, . . . are you saying that centaurs aren't real? What have I been being taught all this time?!
SlipSloop 8 months ago 35
Sometimes it feels like somewhat reasonable people are fighting a losing battle Lindy, I remember one of my friends recommending the movie "300" to me on the basis that I was interested in history... yeah that shows the level of comprehension of ancient history of most people. They watch shows on spike tv (not sure if you have it there in the UK) and imediatly feel that they are experts on any given topic.
Kooletz71 8 months ago