If we assume that they truly existed as a society of women who were independent owners of themselves, their weapons, and their property, and were not under the power of men, could this be considered a manifestation of those principles of personal autonomy, self-ownership, and equality that you write about?

Nihilist (question accompanied by a donation of 0.0005 ₿)

Even if we don’t assume that the Amazons were a real, purely female society, and instead consider them—following current historians—to be ordinary steppe female warriors in ordinary nomadic tribes, they still represented an intellectual challenge for the Greeks creating their myths.

The attitude toward common curiosities, like people with dog heads living somewhere on the fringes of the Oecumene, was much more relaxed: so what if there are cynocephali, my neighbor over there is practically a ram. But here we are talking about a different social structure, where a woman possesses military honor and valor, which means that these qualities, as it turns out, are inherent to every woman. Meanwhile, we, an enlightened people, know that if you just give a woman her way, this weak, cunning, and corrupted creature will destroy all of civilization: she will chatter endlessly at folk assemblies about her trivial problems, seduce worthy husbands into unworthy deeds, and in her audacity, she might even demand the right to a divorce while keeping the children… No way, forget it. Lock them in the gynaeceum. Even the Lacedaemonians, for all the female liberties they allow, still don’t let them into the folk assembly. And here, naturally, people live freely, plundering neighbors no worse than we enlightened Greeks, and women participate equally with men in all affairs. Such a thing cannot be.

Better to tell a story about how these women kick their men out entirely, and only through this strange practice did they acquire all the virtues befitting warriors. Now this is a challenge not for a reformist politician, but merely for a hero: sail to this land, plunder their capital, and defeat the queen in a duel and fuck her. Worthy booty. One can even consider this union a bond of equals; it’s not scary. After all, great heroes coupled with goddesses, and that’s no reason to lock a goddess in a gynaeceum, so it’s forgivable here as well. The main thing is to return home afterward without an Amazon wife who will start imposing her own order in the new place. Or do you think that’s also fine? Well, here is the story of Medea. She, of course, wasn’t an Amazon but a sorceress, but she also tried to impose her order in Iolcus, and it didn’t end well. So we don’t need any of that. Our establishments are the best.

But let’s assume that the Amazons were a real people in which women “lesbo-separated” and led roughly the kind of lifestyle described in the myths. Cultural norms can be very persistent, so why wouldn’t this specific cultural norm survive into fully historical times? What would that change in human history?

First, of course, the Amazon people would be conquered by the Persians. There is no point in appointing a satrap to a nomadic people; a dynasty of Amazon queens would simply recognize their vassalage. This wouldn’t particularly change the Amazons’ way of life. They would fight at Marathon, Thermopylae, and Plataea; Xenophon would tell us about the retreat of Greek mercenaries through the land of the Amazons in his Anabasis, and Seleucus or Mithridates would couple with their queens—in general, the Amazons in antiquity would feel quite fine as a people within one empire or another. They would still remain a desirable prize for a hero, and in this capacity, they would significantly legitimize female monarchical rule. Equal marriages of monarchs with equal participation in affairs would be perceived as a variety of cultural norm.

Serious problems would begin for the Amazons with the emergence of Islam, since the cultural norm it aggressively imposes has very little in common with the historical Amazon way of life. Of course, nomadic tribes usually Islamize slowly and incompletely, but the most orthodox Amazons in their beliefs would likely migrate from their southern Black Sea coast to some middle-of-nowhere in the eastern Caspian steppes, where they would survive even the Mongols without much trouble. To the Mongols, the Amazons would not be some particular exoticism, at least no more so than the customs of Tibet. When the Amazon territory fell under the power of the Soviet Union, they would, of course, start molding them into a model for the liberated women of the East, but not too zealously, because the Soviet woman must be emancipated without separation from men.

And now the Amazon autonomous republic is part of the republic of Turkmenistan. The Amazons breed excellent horses and weave wonderful carpets depicting Queen Penthesilea defeating the Achaeans at Troy. Their cultural traditions haven’t gone anywhere: they still hold a large annual festival where local jigits gather and compete with the festival hostesses. The most worthy are chosen by them as husbands and they depart for remote nomadic camps to conceive a child. After the first signs of pregnancy appear, the wife waves goodbye to her spouse, and he clears out, leaving an email. If a boy is born, the father is notified, and he is told to come back in another year to take his son.