That the Amazons may have been the female fighters of the Scythians really shouldn't come as a surprise. Virgil states that the "tribes of the Scythians and the Amazons became one" after warriors from each camped near each other and began meeting in pairs at night; Virgil may have been in error only in that the two were never separate. There were not a few American Indian groups in which the women routinely went to war; besides those for whom the Amazon River is named, the Caddo of what is now Texas boasted many women fighters.

The Amazons of legend - tribes living without men, or tribes where the women are the fighters and the men the housekeepers - are unlikely to have ever existed anywhere. Casualties are unavoidable in war, and, while the cost to the future of a tribe incurred when a male warrior is lost may be slight, the cost involved in the loss of a female is enormous. An averagely virile male can father at least 300 children a year; for a woman the average is just one.