The Amazons--the women warriors the Greek writers mention so often--have become a popular part of our folklore. In the New World, early explorers more than once encountered fighting women, and the world's largest river, the Amazon, is named for a group that once attacked some Spanish conquistadors.
Lately, what is being referred to in the mass media as "evidence for the existence" of the Amazons has just been published--and it is true that burials of young women in what is obviously battle gear has been discovered.
These are not quite the Amazons of myth, though. They did not live without men, did not kill their male children; they were, apparently, part of that group of nomadic horsemen-and-women who once lived in what is now Southern Russia and who were known as the Scythians--and, certainly, their men were fighters as well.