"vishalsagarwal" <vishalagarwal@...> quoted from the Central Asian Times:
<<According to Herodotus, Amazons cut their right breast off and then burned
the wound with hot iron in order to prevent them from hunting and drawing a
bow in battle.>>
What convoluted reporting is this? The traditional explanation is that the
Amazons "got rid of the right breast [<mazos>, breast] that it might not
interfere with the use of the bow." (Lidell-Scott) And Herodotus exlicitly
says that the Amazons DID hunt and DID use the bow. And I'm not sure he even
ever reported on the breast fable.
I hope this misreport is not meant to rewrite the old texts to make them jive
with finding swords and not bows in the graves.
<<"If we find in a grave weapons beside a men's skeleton, we are sure that he
was a warrior. So a similar conclusion is logical when we deal with women's
remnants,"...>>
We don't know the specific rationale in any such prehistoric culture for
putting weapons in graves or not putting weapons in graves. There is no way
to be "sure" of anything. For all we know, weapons were simply valuable and
they were meant to be something to trade with on the other side - what else
was found in these and other graves is probably just as or more relevant.
Steve Long