Myths and Reality -- The Amazons

There are myths that cross with reality.  Troy and Delphi are two towns that are good examples.  Both have a foot in myths and also in reality.  There had been archaeological excavation in both cities.  Troy is the setting of a war.  The horse used to enter the city is well known as the Trojan horse.   It is all myth.  There was signs of war on the archaeological site.  It must be doubted it was as described in the myth.

For Delphi, it was the seat of the Pythia, a prophetess that speak in the name of Apollo.  In real life, other cities and various people came to Delphi for advices.  In myth, it was also the case.  In myths, the Pythia always was saying the truth.  The problem was in interpreting correctly the message.  I guess it was for dramatic reason, the people consulting the Pythia, in myth, never interpreted the message correctly.

There is also another less know element of myth that cross reality.  It is not as well known as Troy and Delphi.  Both cities are celebrated in myth and today too.  The myth that I am thinking about is not a place.  It is a people: the Amazons.  In myth, the Amazons are a tribe of women that goes to war.  Many Amazonian Queen had been against many famous heroes.  Heracles and Hippolyta,  Theseus and Antiope or Hippolyta depending on the myths.  There is also a myth where the Amazons goes to war with Athens.  There is also Achilles and Penthesilea, in the Trojan War.

This is mythological stories.  There are been discoveries that put some credit to the myth of the Amazons.  It is in the steppes of Eurasia.  There been kurgans, big tumulus that host tombs, where women had been discovered with weapons.  People living there were pretty much nomads, so everyones had to be able to defend themselves.  Herodotus, among many others ancients, spoke of those tribes in his writings.  From what I read, it is fairly recent that archaeologists had become conscious that grave goods can be misleading.  There is an entry in the Encyclopedia Mythica on Amazons.  (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/amazons.html)

Why I am talking about it?  I am reading a book on Amazons by Adrienne Mayor (https://www.amazon.ca/Amazons-Legends-Warrior-across-Ancient/dp/0691147205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513001237&sr=8-1&keywords=amazons).  It speak of many tribes in that region.  Be it Thracian, Sarmatians, Maeotians, Scythians...  I had also read a book on Warrior Women (https://www.amazon.ca/Warrior-Women-Archaeologists-Historys-Heroines/dp/0446679836/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513003113&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=jeanine+davis-kimball) by Jeannine Davis-Kimball and Mona Behan
So, the Amazsons have some roots in reality.  It is not a perfect match but there is a coonection.  It may be there that the Ancients Greeks took their inspiration for their Amazons.  It only show how the Ancients Greeks were inspired by their own world and by their neighbors.

It really interesting to see the reality of those tribes from the steppes be turned into a myth.  In turn, the myth does not have total connection with the origin of that myth.  Learning about the origins of a myth help to see how the reality become myth.  It is also fun to go from the myth to the reality.  It is discovering a new world that could inspire something else totally.  I would like to write something ispired from the steppes and it's people.  It would be closer to what I am reading in the two books mentionned aboved.  Of course, it will not be totally 100% close to that but I want to borrow some concepts and gives them my own spin.