It seems reasonable to suppose that the historical counterparts of Amazons and their male companions on the steppes spent the majority of their time much as did their descendants described in eighteenth - and nineteenth-century ethnographic literature. They followed age-old patterns of herding, raising horses, attending festivals, telling stories, trading, and hunting, punctuated by skirmishing and small-scale marauding.
In the glimpses of Amazon life we can glean from ancient Greek literature and art, the women warriors were passionately devoted to riding horses and perfecting guerrilla-style combat skills for defense, raiding, and conquest; wielding swords, bows, and spears; and fighting and dying valiantly. But the independent women of the Black Sea-Caucasus-steppe region are also portrayed by Greek writers as taking time out for such peaceful activities as capturing, training, and milking their horses; chasing game; harvesting fruit; having sex; getting tattooed; raising tomboys and delivering sons to their fathers; fashioning leather into helmets, clothing, boots, and belts; swimming and grooming; inhaling hemp smoke; dancing, playing music, and performing sacrifices and religious rites. In short, the picture of Amazon daily life imagined by the Greeks conforms in large part to the glimpses of the flexible, fluid nomad life on the steppes that we can gather from history, archaeology, and anthropology.11
Scythians were known in antiquity for their endurance and ability to withstand wintry temperatures, ice, and snow. The distinctive leggings and tunics, cloaks, leather boots, hats with earflaps, and animals skins worn by Amazon and Scythian archers in ancient Greek vase paintings were obviously designed for cold weather. Similar articles of clothing and furs have been recovered from ancient burials, along with the supplies for hemp-vapor sweat-bath saunas.
Another secret weapon against freezing temperatures known to Amazons and Scythians was mentioned in an obscure ancient treatise, On Rivers, by Pseudo-Plutarch (third century AD). This is the same author who explained that the Tanais (Don) River was once known as the Amazon River because the Amazons used to bathe there. “Along the Amazon River grows a plant called halinda, like a colewort. Bruising this plant and anointing their bodies with the juice makes them better able to endure the extreme cold.12 Perhaps the Amazons depicted on the unique Greek vase painting in figure 7.2 Were meant to be swimming in the Amazon River; one of the women is applying oil from an aryballos.
What was this mysterious Amazon folk remedy for warming the body? Luckily, Pseudo-Plutarch gives us a clue for identifying the ancient Scythian word halinda by comparing it to colewort, cabbage. Botanical detective work reveals that the halinda plant was probably Bras-sica napus, a hardy wild cabbage of Russia and Siberia, related to Brassica oleracea. Wild coleworts were the ancestors of today’s edible cabbages, kale, collards, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and rapeseed/ canola oil. The cruciferous plants were first cultivated between twenty-five hundred and four thousand years ago and were bred to reduce the amount of toxic mustard oils, sulfur-containing glucosinolates, which give plants of this species their pungent, bitter taste. Wild cabbage contains a lot of the mustard oil, an irritant. Rubbed on the body as a massage oil, it is a strong stimulant of circulation, bringing blood to the skin surface, causing an invigorating, warm sensation and alleviating the aches of arthritis. Archaeological studies of female and male skeletons reveal that arthritis pain dogged the rugged horse riders of the steppes. The analgesic action of halinda oil salve would be similar to the medical uses of capsaicin, the irritant oil of hot chili peppers from the New World, applied as a topical ointment to relieve arthritic pain.
Halinda oil also had antibacterial, antifungal properties and repelled insects, and the oil’s propensity to cling to metal and repel water would make it valuable for rustproofing the iron knives and tools unearthed in the graves of warrior women and men. In Pseudo-Plutarch’s day, the local people along the Amazon River called halinda oil “Berossus oil.” Berossus was the husband of the Amazon Lysippe and the father of
Tanais, who drowned in the Don River. It seems that a fuller story about this Amazon family was once current, lost except for this intriguing fragment.
Someday tests of substances in “cosmetic jars” preserved in Scythian burials might turn up traces of the Amazons’ halinda oil or their apres-sauna cedar-frankincense unguent described by Herodotus. Residues of koumiss, pigments, pollens, hemp, and other seeds have been already been discovered among the grave goods of women warriors, and analysis of cosmetics shows that Pazyryk women used “the natural blue pigment vivanite and made complicated fat-based masques to protect the skin from extreme climates.”13
World History
