Behold the face of an Amazon warrior!

Protothema reports on a remarkable feat of modern skill and ancient beauty: the woman depicted below was created by tested and tried methods to restore a face on a skull. In this case, the skull belonged to a teenage Amazonian warrior.

 

The remains of a 2,500-year-old female body unearthed at the Altai Mountains suggest that she may have been a member of the elite all-female virgin Amazon warriors revered by the ancient Hellenes. She lay entombed beside a much older man, accompanied by shields, battle axes, bows and arrowheads. A close examination of her body indicated that she had once been active, a skilled equestrian and archer. Furthermore, nine horses, four bridled, were buried with her, accompanying her to the afterlife.

Aged sixteen at the time of death, the teenage warrior girl’s face was revealed using intricate taxidermy techniques. Siberian archaeologist Dr. Natalya Polosmak had located the remains of the teenage warrior in 1990. Buried in her riding clothes, with horses, Polosmak explains that representatives of the little-known members of a Pazyryk elite, in which women, for social and economic reasons, were allowed to be war-like were buried in this way, these women were known from multiple mentions of the legendary Amazons. Hippokrátēs wrote of these women as a Scythian group famed for their mastery of mounted warfare:

“The women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites. A woman who takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general expedition.”