Amazons and a Novel Idea

During my lunch breaks I often browsed the Barnes & Nobel Bookstore in downtown Minneapolis (now, sadly, closed). One day in 2016 while perusing the history section, I spotted a book titled Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women in the Ancient World.* I didn't buy it immediately -- woman warriors are hot and all but I figured the book would be overly speculative and sensational. Yet whenever I returned to the store, it seemed to beckon. Eventually I broke down.

The purchase marked a turning point for me, not only sparking a fascination with ancient history, but stimulating an idea and an obsession that ultimately turned into my first (and only) finished novel.

As for the author, Adrienne Mayor, she is a respected scholar and writer of a highly regarded history, The Poison King.*

Amazons, of course, are the menacing warrior women that appear frequently in Greek literature and art. Sometimes they're depicted as strange, savage aliens; sometimes as tragic heroines. Many of the major heroes -- Heracles, Theseus, Achilles -- encounter Amazons during their adventures. Often the hero meets an Amazon queen in battle, kills her, then regrets it afterward in a tearful death scene, thinking he could have loved her instead.

Achilles kills Penthesilea

The consensus was that Amazon myths had little or no basis in actual history. The ancient historians didn't give them credence except Herodotus but he was considered unreliable in that regard. There was no archaeological evidence of an Amazon kingdom and no evidence that women fought as warriors in any substantial way. The myths were a product of the Greek imagination, a counterpoint perhaps to the way the fiercely patriarchal Greeks tended to keep women separated, suppressed and out of sight. All those women on vase paintings decked out in armor and wielding spears were just figments of men's dark, erotic fantasies.

But wait.

Scattered throughout the Eurasian plains are burial mounds known as kurgans and hundreds have been excavated over the last couple of centuries. In them were the remains of a nomadic people the Greeks knew as Scythians. Nearly all appeared to be warriors who were interred with weapons, armor and other objects of their lives. Naturally, these warriors must have been men.

Then DNA analysis came along and researchers applied it to the skeletons. Oddly, some were female. Probably just a fluke, a couple of exceptional individuals maybe, or possibly they were buried with armor and weapons for ceremonial reasons. As more of the remains were analyzed, more were discovered to have been women. And not only were they buried with armor and weapons, they had battle wounds to show their bona fides -- holes in their skulls, great cuts in their limbs, and so on. These women were indeed combatants and turned out to represent about 30 percent of the warriors found in the kurgans.

Thirty percent. Even if you allow that female remains may be over represented in the kurgans for some reason, it still means the Scythians were employing significant numbers of women as warriors. And, since the Greeks were in contact with the Scythians since at least 800 BCE, they almost had to be the source material for the Amazon myths. (Which isn't to say the myths don't remain erotic fantasies.)

Who were these Scythians? What was their culture like? Mayor suggests it was highly egalitarian, at least in regards to gender relations. She points to things found in the graves that aren't weapons or armor, things like spindle whorls. 

In Greek society, only women spun thread. But in the Scythian burial mounds, spindle whorls were found with the male warriors as well as the female. All Scythians, it seemed, spun thread.

~

My imagination swirled. I began to wonder what a truly gender-egalitarian society would look like. I wasn't sure, but it would be fun to explore the possibility. 

This line of thought converged with another that I'd indulged for some time: What if you could go back in time and see what actually happened? How much of "history" would turn out to be wrong? A lot, I think.

Then it hit me: Castaways from the 21st century are hurled back 2,500 years and end up in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains not far from the Black Sea. After a wilderness adventure, they end up in a Greek colony on the coast. The main character is a woman and finds life with the paternalistic Greeks hard to bear. Later she hooks up with a band of Scythians who are more to her liking.

This was the beginnings of a plot. It would be an action-adventure story that would give readers a look at two contrasting societies -- the Greeks, whose culture is much like our own (despite recent progress); and the Scythians whose ways might seem weird even to modern liberal sensibilities.

I was energized and I had much work to do.

[Edit: The book is published and available *here.]

A Tale of Two Bows

I was practicing with my new bow at Wirth Park's* archery range when a large pickup pulled up and a very tall man got out (taller than me and that's tall). Short-cropped hair, camo jacket and wrap-around sunglasses -- all signs of someone with a conservative bent. He hauled a big black case to the picnic table and unpacked what to my eyes looked like a contraption -- a high-tech compound bow. It was late September and he was likely there to tune up for the deer hunting season. I said hi, he nodded and I continued shooting.

Only a few weeks earlier, out of curiosity, I had purchased a primitive recurve bow known generally as a horse bow. The style originates from the bows used by horse nomads of the Eurasian steppe -- Turks, Mongols, Huns, Alans, and back through time to the original horse nomads: Scythians.* I was writing and researching a novel that involved Scythians and I wanted to get an idea of what it was like to shoot one of their bows.

The bows were called "composite" because they were made with a combination of wood, bone, horn and sinew. The limbs for my bow were made of fiberglass but, by all accounts, the shooting characteristics were similar to the ancient bows. I found it a challenge to shoot. There's no ledge to rest the arrow on so you have to use your hand, and there's nothing to aim with so you have to shoot instinctively. My early efforts were awful but I was starting to get the hang of it. No one was going to confuse me with Robin Hood but at least I was hitting the hay bale.

The tall man attached a couple of things to his bow and made adjustments with a screwdriver.  He set up his own target 40 yards away and began to shoot. Instead of pulling the string back with his fingers, he used a triggering device designed to provide crisp, consistent releases. This is standard for compound bows.

A compound bow uses a system of pulleys and cables to change the nature of the draw. With a traditional bow, the further you pull back the heavier the draw. A compound bow's draw is the opposite, heavy at the beginning but light at the back. This allows people to shoot stronger bows and reduces fatigue.

The tall man's initial groups were tight and became even tighter after he got his sight zeroed in. I started to feel a little silly as I worked to keep my arrows within a two-foot circle at 25 yards. But I kept at it -- breath from the stomach, focus on the target, draw, pause, release. Between volleys he watched me with, I  assumed, some amusement mixed with derision. I finished my volley and we both walked to our targets to retrieve the arrows.

"What kind of bow is that?" The tall man asked.

I explained and handed him the bow to look at.

"Jesus, it's so light," he said. "Damn, that's a cool bow."

"Not quite as accurate as yours," I said.

"No, but you make me feel like I'm cheating," he said.

We went on to have a good conversation about bows and hunting and other stuff. He pointed out, correctly, that the arrows I was using weren't stiff enough. Later I bought stiffer arrows and my accuracy improved.

~

Technology is seductive and the compound bow is a good case in point. The time and effort needed to shoot accurately with a primitive bow is considerable. With a compound bow, even a relative beginner can become reasonably accurate in a short time. The modern compound bow is about reducing human elements to a minimum in favor of mechanical precision. It's a marvel of ingenuity.

But something is lost in the experience. Shooting a primitive bow has a way of opening the mind because you're forced to use more of it and use parts that reside below the level of consciousness.

In thinking about this kind of thing, I've come to believe that whenever technology replaces a skill, it represents a diminishment. The threat is that as technology advances, the human animal grows less capable and ever more dependent.

I don't want to dis technology and be a crotchety Luddite. The question is how do you distinguish good tech from bad? The electric guitar, I would argue, is good tech because it opens up a world of musical possibility that otherwise wouldn't exist, yet it doesn't replace guitar-playing skill. But that's a clear-cut example. Most technologies are in some measure both enhancing and diminishing (computers, smart phones, the internet, automobiles and so on).

So what do we do? Do we go along for the ride -- let our skills shrink to a handful of vocational specialties (if even those can't be replaced) and move toward becoming little more than entertainment absorption organisms? I don't have an answer. Maybe the marginalization of humanity by technology is a natural and inevitable development. I, for one, intend to resist and keep shooting my horse bow until they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Traveling Light

Back in 1996 I was getting ready for a long trip that would take me through much of Europe and Egypt. I was planning to be gone months yet I wanted to travel light. The Internet was a pretty new thing at the time but I found a site, a kind of proto-blog, created by a woman who traveled extensively throughout the world. Her only luggage was a purse and a carry-on bag. This was one of her rules: Create a list of only the things you absolutely have to bring with you then cut the list in half.

I followed her advice and boarded the plane for London with only a carry-on suitcase that could be converted to a backpack (a feature that was itself unnecessary). I was fine. I don't recall ever pining for something I'd left behind.

I adopted traveling light as a principle and I've tried to apply it to other facets of life, not just traveling. But it's hard. The world really wants me to accumulate stuff and it's so easy and so cheap (relatively speaking). I live in a small house and, somehow, despite the fact I'm not a collector by nature, my home is overflowing with stuff, most of which I don't use or need. I'm planning to purge the clutter but it's turning into quite a project. I wish I'd had the discipline to refrain from buying most of the things in the first place.

I also believe that the principle of traveling light can be applied to the clutter of the mind. In a way, cleaning that attic is a more daunting challenge than getting rid of physical things.

Whether it's objects or ideas, purging excess requires ruthlessness. It's easy to get attached to things and ideas. To cast them aside, you have to be willing to put on your emotional hardhat and realize there are no precious objects nor precious ideas. One has to be ready to say good riddance to any of them.

This is an instance where the warrior idiom comes in handy, particularly an unencumbered, swift-footed one like a peltast*.

[What? You say this warrior metaphor is just another idea I'll need to part with. Over my dead body!]

Introduction: What the Hell is a Peltast?

It's 390 B.C. near the ancient city of Corinth and the Spartan king makes a costly mistake. Disdaining the threat of enemy forces inside the city, he marches a brigade of 600 heavily armored warriors around it without the usual escort of archers or cavalry. An Athenian general named Iphicrates looks on from Corinth's walls and sees his chance. He sallies forth with several hundred light troops known as peltasts.

The peltasts are javelin-throwers named for their distinctive crescent-shaped shields made of wicker (pelta). Peltasts came to prominence during the Peloponnesian War and the term was closely associated with Thracian* mercenaries for whom loose-order fighting in rough country was a way of life.

Iphicrates' peltasts rush the Spartan column and hurl their javelins. The Spartan warriors, known as hoplites, turn to attack with their heavy spears but the nimble peltasts stay out of reach. When the Spartans stop the chase to continue on their way, the peltasts rush them again. This back-and-forth goes on and the Spartans grow frustrated. Then, as casualties mount, they panic and flee.

The action was known as the Battle of Lechaeum* and it was a humiliating blow to the Spartans who considered themselves the preeminent warriors of the time. They were routed by a bunch of scrappy low-life barbarians.

So why name a blog, "The Peltast?"

Because all the other names are taken!

No, actually, peltasts spurred my imagination when I first read about them 10-12 years ago. I love walking, hiking and occasionally hunting, and I've learned that traveling light is a good thing. I also like to keep my feet on the ground (both in actuality and philosophically). Reading about these Thracian warriors -- rugged up-country wanderers who foreshadowed partisans and guerrilla fighters of later eras -- struck a chord in me. So it seems like "peltast" is a good metaphor for my general outlook on things.

Others may identify with samurai, or knights, or ninja, or hulking fantasy warriors swinging impossibly heavy axes. But, for me, it's the peltast -- underrated, underestimated, light, maneuverable and deadly.

Of course I wish no one harm. My warrior nature, such as it is, I confine to the world of ideas. I am a peltast of the mind, and this is my web log.