Gender Roles - Female Warriors/Defenders

Remember though, female refers to sex and woman refers to gender. These are not always equal. :wink:

I reckon leaving labour division up for the player to decide would be the best solution here. Not only would this be the most diplomatic solution, but also the most dynamic one, creating the highest replay value for the game. Either way, people would have to face the consequences of their preferred style. Those to go with rigid gender roles would need to carefully balance the female/male ratio accordingly and risk more trouble and a longer period of time to recover from imbalances, while those who decide for more diverse gender roles may have to deal with less/slower growth. After all, that’s what actually makes a simulation realistic.
It would be nice if the player could assign a sim to a certain job directly. That would really increase immersion and demands more consideration for your people, as it may be necessary to change during a sim’s lifespan (when a woman becomes pregnant, or a man is injured/becomes disabled, for example).

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Very late to this discussion, but it would be more reasonable to let the roles of gender to determine gender roles rather than wishful thinking.

It is likely that females wil face pregnancy fairly early in their lives, up until that time yes they may well hunt with bows, gather wood and stand on a watchtower.

However a baby bump, then a baby changes everything.

There may well be cults a woman may join, and some women may be barren, or isolated, but in time biology will get in the way.

I do not know what would happen if the tribes elders decided, “no more babies for a while, we will be crossing the mountains after the spring melt”. Could the edict stick, will a tribe get more hunters. Is all this achieved by massed weddings, with the next batch deferred?

Also a mother can be a hunter, but her range is likely shorter, there will be a reduced constitution, and a need to return regularly to look after an infant. Perhaps a tribe develops upon that, with zones reserved for hunting by the tribes mothers, while the men, and those unmarried females who can keep up, ranging further away from the settlement.

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Interesting article on BBC science Hidden history of prehistoric women's work revealed - BBC News

I would be surprised if women weren’t fierce defenders

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Thanks for the article! The way I look at it, if your village is being attacked and you’re pretty sure the enemy means to kill all of you, woman or not you’ll probably fight. Women are often portrayed in the media as running in fear at the first sign of danger, but we know, historically, that this isn’t always the case. Additionally, women will usually defend their children at the cost of their own life.

I was just always annoyed in video games where the peasants always ran in fear, especially women. I can understand unarmed peasants running from 100 heavily-armed Viking warriors, but even when they have overwhelming numbers they still run in most video games.

Which would only be the case if a Bandit Party consisting of Psychopaths would raid it - every other hostile entity would kill all those who defend (man or woman, though historically mostly man) and enslave (force into serfdom) the rest to work for their needs. This is the reason why peasants always run (Only the stupid ones’ fight) - From the point of view of a peasant it is not important to whom he serves, as long as he or she lives.

Also:

There are numerous incidents throughout history, for example in the German peasant wars, where a much smaller force of Professional Warriors, meaning People who only live to fight and feast, have crushed much larger forces of peasants and more with relative ease (Take a look on the casualty ratios, they are insane, most battles are titled “massacres” because of that German Peasants' War - Wikipedia) - that is also a reason why peasants always run.

The fact that slavery or serfdom, which was common sense for thousands of years, is not modelled into modern games for morale reasons leads to the assumption that running peasants just get killed without a fight - in reality, in most cases that would not be the outcome. Edit: Actually in the Cossacks strategy game series it is modelled the right way, you can steal your enemies peasents and let them work for you :slight_smile:

Furthermore, I always stress this when someone drops “gender” in a discussion like this: It doesn’t matter whether you are man or woman, if you run, you’re chances of survival will always be higher than to face a seasoned warrior (I choose this wording because you made the Viking example). The actual “fighting” is not as easy as someone from our age would imagine, if you swing your crude axe or scythe (Peasants weapons) like a stick against someone who at least knows the basics of hand-to-hand combat you would get crushed - as a hardy peasant woman in the same way as a hardy peasant man.

Man/Woman will always run first, and once they get cornered with NO OTHER solution they will fight bitterly to the end, that is a fact that has already been stressed by Sun-Tzu in “Art of War” and even is modelled into some games (like some older games in the Total War Series, where surrounded units without the possibility to flee will stand to the last man/woman).

Sorry, I know this post is getting long - to get back to the actual topic: While you might get a different impression at this point, I am totally fine with female warriors or hunters. I have had one game on my YouTube Channel playing Crusader Kings II in a role-playing manner, where at one point I actually had a Queen ruling my Kingdom.

This Girl not only had the Looks, she also was a Brilliant Strategist and had a decent learning skill, so I thought: “If I was her, I would push woman rights in my Kingdom so that woman could take all the positions that man already could by default” - and that is great because suddenly the character pool for important position gets a lot bigger.

BUT and this is the most important sentence in this whole Post: The BEST will get the position, it’s all about Skills, it’s never about gender.

Technically speaking: if peasants have stat lines that count towards their battle capabilities like for example Strength giving them more HP I would always pick a 10 STR woman over a 5 STR man - If it is just “units” without stat lines, just allow everything for everyone. I know games where peasant woman collect berries quicker than man, which on their side are better hunters - that might by kind of historically correct (Which is kind of a generalization because every person is different, no matter the gender) but honestly: who gives a damn – from a game mechanics perspective that is plain old stupid because it forces the player to micro woman and man XD.

Sorry, if my English seems bad, I’m not a native speaker.

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[Yes, I have pictures for everything lol - I’ve spent all of my $ on illustratiuons]

My message was slightly ambiguous because I was speaking of two different time periods, their differences being less important, given the context of the previous message.

The first part of my message speaks of the Neolithic. Within the Neolithic, there does not exist a concept of peasants. While there may have been social strata, an overt, hierarchical right-shifted society has yet to be described, though one can suppose there might have been a sort of “soft cast” system (evidence for this not really being sufficient, either.)

Examining “mass” conflict, as it were, in the Neolithic leads us often to the conclusion that combat was either small-scale, a few “warriors” raid in a snatch and grab method, or it was wholesale genocide. This is evidenced by the find of entire slaughter tribes, in the case of genocide, and without significant lesser sized burials, indicating other forms of violence were probably small and haphazard.

Now suppose that you are very Neolithic woman and a large force, who seemingly or probably intends upon wiping out your tribe, appears, what do you think? If the enemy succeeds, they may kill you or take you as a slave. Sometimes people suggest that this would be preferable to death, but when you watch your children killed and your husband tossed lifelessly into a body pile, you might find a different perspective. Perhaps if the enemy appears absolutely overwhelming, you might take your child and run, but your likelihood of survival is pretty low. Your people have long ago left the Mesolithic, and with it some of the skills which probably better prepared individuals for soul survival; the specialization of labor slowly increasing to take their place. Worse, the enemy may pursue you forcing you to put as much distance between you and them as possible. Did you eat enough food that morning? How far can you go? What can you quickly grab, besides your child? Neolithic woman were probably quite resourceful, but that is still quite a challenge as she probably has a child in her arms and an entirely family to consider.

If she believes there’s a chance that her side might drive the enemy away, she might very well left a weapon. Additionally, even if she does decide to run, she might still snatch a weapon for her own defense, such as adze or a hand ax.


Both of these would probably be known to her, readily at hand and contribute to the defense of the tribe even if in an ad hoc fashion.

As for actual peasants, who exist in a much later time period, my rejection was that they always run, not that they often run. I don’t believe we can safely say that humans always do anything. One of the reasons peasants might be willing to run is because of the hierarchical caste structure put in place affording them a value. One need to the labor force, and those who fit the role had a value as a result. But of course, this is a much later time and not really applicable to the Neolithic.

I found an interesting article on Viking women warriors. Now vikings are 3900-6000 years after the Neolithic in Western Europe, but this is simply more evidence that women, when not prevented via cultural reasons, can be warriors.

We may never know if Neoithic women fought, but evidence like this helps shed light on possibilities.

http://amp.history.com/news/lost-viking-army-bones-discovery?__twitter_impression=true

Now what I’d need really like to find is a woman buried with weapons and markings indicating combat.

Of course, we don’t have that many warrior finds, anyway.

Thoughts?

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Honestly, I don’t see this peculiar case helping a lot for the cause.

I’m not in any way a specialist of the Vikings, but the Great Heathen Army was both an army and a migration aiming to grab wealth and land in England. This may explain the 20% of women, that could be wives of a part of the warriors, but also slaves, etc.

A number of them may have been warriors, but probably most were not – exactly like a number of men were certainly not warriors themselves, but slaves, attendants for the ships and the horses, etc.

And every army, in every time, had a number of women following them: prostitutes, women, children, etc. However, I guess those women were selected for a good reason, as this was not a land route that they followed: as they came by ship, this means there was a limited number of people that could be allowed to go aboard, and probably the fact they were there is an indication of a conscious selection.


To broaden the topic to the Neolithic times, we could consider this Great Pagan Army a bit like a hunting party.
I’m thinking here to those Natufian semi-subterranean houses that have been found in the Levant, whose for a number of them are suspected to have been shelters for hunting parties dispatched from more sedentary settlements.

Probably there was a number of members of those parties keeping at the shelters while most members went hunting in the surrounding area, left there to store the meat, process the hides, etc.

Some of those non-hunter members may have been men or women, exactly like the hunters themselves – supposing here they had well defined roles, instead of taking turns to keep at the house or go hunting in the surrounding area.

And, all in all, if they had been killed and found on the place, we could have found both men and women, but without any clear indication of their role it would be quite difficult to define if they were hunters or not.

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But this is the problem we continuously see. I’ve just finished reading multiple scholarly articles on this topic and each one of them makes exactly the same fault in logic: A large portion of the skeletons do not have enough evidence to indicate why they died. An arrow wound to the abdomen, a slash throat; These may not leave marks on bones. They did find many warriors with very obvious fatal trauma, such as a man who appeared to have a sword shoved through his eye. Based upon this, they make the assumption that the other men are likely warriors, which is what they say in these articles.

They find about 53 women shoved into a grave filled with warriors, and what is their hypothesis… They suggest that perhaps they were brought all the way there from Scandinavia and deposited as a secondary burial. Now how does that make any sense?

Consider that when they find male skeletons they assume that they are warriors, but when they find female skeletons they immediately begin forming hypotheses of slaves, servants, secondary burials. So why is it that they don’t come to the same initial hypothesis they do for the men? Because we form are hypotheses, it seems, using our current understanding of culture.

We know that there have been many women warriors in ancient times, just look at the steppes cultures as an example. If those women had not been buried with weapons and every conceivable indicator overwhelmingly showing they were warriors, they would probably have been written off as servants or slaves. Luckily for them, they had so much evidence, tremendously more than a lot of the men who are automatically credited as Warriors, that they got that title.

The point I’m getting to is the circularity of the problem.

When man is found in military context:
Men are often Warriors and he was found among Warriors, therefore he is a warrior unless proven otherwise.

When woman is found in military context:

  1. Women are rarely combatants ( we never seem to find evidence of them)
  2. The skeleton is a woman, and given our first assertion, we judge it more likely than not that she arrived via some other method or had some other capacity

As a result, the next time you find a woman argument one forms the Assumption argument too, because the last one you found was also discredited for the same reason, and so on.

The bias is so bad that when the Viking Warrior woman in recent news was declared as such, archeology immediately took to finding any flaw they could with the methods used. The Bones had been moved around, things had not been properly identified in situ. While these may be valid criticisms and she may not have been a warrior, ask yourself how often the same level of skepticism is applied to make warrior buried with weapons and armor, as she was. There lies the double standard. And for every warrior woman who’s not identified, the likelihood that next one will be presumed as not a warrior is increased. This is a self-reinforcing bias.

So the reason this helps out the cause when i post such an article is because it clearly demonstrates a scenario where the men are easily assumed as Warriors while the women are not, and no real plausible explanation exists to explain they’re being there without grasping at straws, thus shining a light on the problem.

Additionally:

If the women who had accompanied the men as “slaves and servants” had been killed, it seems strange that the bodies of the Vikings would be buried with honors, jewelry and even objects placed ceremoniously to replace missing limbs, as is the case in that particular burial I mentioned. It doesn’t seem likely the enemy would have buried them that way, and if the women, who are assumed to not be combatants while the men are assumed to be combatants, were slaughtered at such a rate, 20% casualties, it would suggest there main stronghold was over run. It’s interesting that they survived enough to provide a complex burial in that situation. A much more simple explanation is that the women were warriors and fell just like the men, which fits much more logically and much more naturally.

As a note to anyone who finds the below some sort of radical feminism, consider that women comprise half of the entire human race and discussion of women is not radical nor feminist, in the discussion of humanity as a whole.

The either neglectful or potentially willful mischaracterization of the role of women in the profession of archaeology is a discussion that his ongoing in the field of archaeology, and is finally beginning to receive the attention and corrective action it requires. For hundreds of years, role of women in history has been silenced not because women didn’t play a part, but because their parts was rarely considered important.

This is clearly evident when you read the majority of history and archaeology books which speak so grandly of our past and the accomplishments of men, usually having a small subsection which discusses how women took care of children and ground grain. One could almost forget that women comprise a full half of the entire human race, and always have. This bias is so intense that it even causes mischaracterizations in favor of bias.

In 2004, Hilary Cool And her team discovered the remains of cremated warrior women, cavalry, who had died in Brougham, and Were buried at a Roman fort, Brocavum.* Had it not been for her careful research as well as the significant evidence revealing the militant nature of the women, they might easily have been is categorized as male cavalry, perpetuating the notion of women as merely non-combatants.
*2004. The Roman Cemetery at Brougham, Cumbria: Excavations 1966 and 1967, Britannia Monograph 21 (London).

Professor John R. Hale, Ph.D. University of Louisville Has an entire lecture on this particular topic. His 32nd lecture in the Great Courses series, Classical Archaeology of Ancient Greece and Rome, does a very good job of illustrating the problem archaeology has with a bias towards genderfication. He spends the entire lecture discussing the nearly willful removal of women from history, in spite of their overwhelming evidence. Of course, one can witness the sort of intellectual misogyny simply by listening to Plato. One might find the works of Sapphos of Lesbos of more interest, but she is rarely discussed.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/classical-archaeology-of-ancient-greece-and-rome.html

The problem isn’t that there are gender norms and gender trends. It is a fact that in most societies, as an example, women leave while men involve themselves in military. However, we see that even our own society this is not always the case. The entire United States military is made up of approximately 14.5% women**. Though there are massive cultural differences between ancient societies and our modern society, one cannot rationally deduce that this entire percentage is motivated purely by contemporary cultural norms. In fact, one cannot truly speculate whether the current percentage is above or below percentages from previous times, empirical data of those times not being available to make such conclusions.
By the numbers: Women in the U.S. military | CNN**
Women in the military by country - Wikipedia

As it stands, the United States has ~203,000 women in active duty (2011,**). One could certainly be excused if they were to develop the notion that a percentage of women found the notion of being a warrior of great personal interest. One could also be forgiven if they asked why so many women of the modern era found military service of interest, yet, archaeology would have us believe this is somehow a new phenomenon.

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I hope they do make this a feature, that you can choose if to have customizable gender roles. Maybe not in every way at least for AI opponents if they’re randomly generated, since that could result in ineffective AI. It would be interesting to have some tribes with amazon warriors, even exclusively, and to see the real pros and cons of that play out IE that you would have more warriors but if the women died it would be more devastating to your population.

Also there should be differences in average abilities between the sexes, like men being physically stronger and also more prone to violence/crime.

Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be worth the trouble in the very sensitive political climate we find ourselves in.

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I totally agree that men and women have various biological differences, statistically speaking, which hopefully will be accounted for as well as variation within those differences.

I doubt severely that they will have a customizable gender roles option, though of course I would absolutely adore that. The thing that was a dealbreaker for me was the idea of women at least on occasion helping in the defense of the tribe as well as hunting. It looks like that’s not going to be a problem so they have already achieved my minimum goal lol

That would be really interesting to see a culture with men and women completely flipped, I doubt they will do this as there’s really no evidence for such a culture. What you pointed out about mending more aggressive is obviously one of the main reasons why this would be a problem. Humans are a competition species, and the men are the competitive part of the species, speaking of course of sexual competition, in a biological sense. Of course women compete to, but the aggressive competition is typically between males, as is seen in other great apes. And you’re definitely right that there is a larger price paid by the community with the loss of a woman, then a man. This is another biological issue, though I don’t think it would preclude the occasional woman engaging in raids.:wink:

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Ya it would be cool if they added features like that, also if they had a genetic system together with family trees and maybe clans in your tribe. Managing those sorts of relationships and conflicts would be a big part of running a tribe realistically, but the team might not have enough resources to delve too deeply into those things or just choose to focus on other things.

Ha ha, ya men were a bit more expendable : P lol mother nature’s a cruel mistress

Having the freedom to create whatever sort of culture you want and test it in the unforgiving stone age world would be a big selling point for me as well.

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I will be reading this book next: The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor. The book is very well researched and has nothing but great reviews. It’s filled from top to bottom with examples of women warriors in the ancient world, many of them that you never hear about.

I’ll now have 1 million examples to provide if anybody is curious how prevalent women warriors were :slight_smile:

  1. The use of powerful bows is difficult for women because of the following reasons
    …1. Breasts severely restrict your ability to draw a bow.
    …2. Men, being physically stronger than women can pull more powerful bows, throw spears further, and fight more effectively.

  2. "Examination of those inhumed at many sites, e.g. Çatalhöyük …have shown the presence of a rather egalitarian society"
    And how is this? Because men and women were buried together with grave goods?

  3. A tribe that fielded its women in battle would go extinct very quickly. A fictitious equal opportunity warrior society would be needlessly throwing away their ability to recover from military setbacks. You may or may not know this but women give birth to the next generation of your tribe. And if a significant number of women die in battle, your tribe will likely go extinct. This is why in REAL life, men fight in wars and women do not. Only desperate tribes fielded women in battle.

  4. "opening up most tasks to being non-gender specific"
    Modern feminist ideology forced upon the past. In the real world, tasks were gender specific. In fact it is stupid not to do so. A tribe that tried to force your modern feminist ideology onto people in the real world would be throwing away many advantages. First of which is that a tribe as a whole will do better off if people best suited to specific tasks do those tasks and become experts. Women make poor hunters of large game due to being physically weaker and less capable of endurance running (I assume you know what it’s like to run up a flight of stairs without a bra).

  5. “Female warriors have existed throughout time and are documented in recorded history"
    Let’s hear these examples then.
    ” Scythians"
    No. The Greeks wrote of military engagements with the Scythians and never once mention your modern equal opportunity fantasy. One would think that such an unusual tribe of equal opportunity warrior women would be mentioned. But it isn’t. You’re thinking of the fictional Amazons, honey.
    "Picts"
    Cite evidence. Romans fought many engagements with the Picts. They never mentioned any modern feminist fantasies. Perhaps you meant the Robert E Howard versions?
    "Iranians"
    What period? The Iranians were literate peoples. Funny how they never mentioned any feminist equal opportunity affirmative action women.
    “general Celtic Peoples”
    ‘General celtic peoples?’ as opposed to specific ones presumably. Again, many cultures fought the Celts and none mentioned that their ranks in battle were filled with butch feminist wannabies.

Feminists who want to insert their ideology into real history fail to remember that humans do not appear out of nowhere and without a large number of women in a tribe having children, that tribe would go extinct. Feminists imagine a bunch of butch, childless feminists fighting along-side men in an equal opportunity film. However childless women would have been a rarity in any time period before the modern era. So in order for this fantasy to make any sense at all, we’ll need to imagine that women with young children would abandon their children to accompany men on a warpath. Who takes care of these children while the modern feminists are away fighting with their weaker bows? And when they’re killed in battle, I suppose the children just starve. Funny how there are no records of the hordes of orphans and woman-less villages after every defeat and loss of a significant number of the butch feminist warrior women.

This thread is pandering to a fantasy and although I doubt that Ancient Cities will risk offending the feminists who managed to bully around the gaming industry, in the real Neolithic era there were few if any feminist fantasies.

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I think we have a lot to unpack here and let me do so with some citations.
I hope you’ll forgive my razzly tone, but you called me honey and implied that I’m some sort of radical feminist with an agenda, so I shall reciprocate my tone in kind. :wink:

a. This may be one of the silliest myths that has never died. You do not need to remove a breast to use a bow effectively. Breasts, even completely bare, do not get in the way of archery unless you are doing some bizarre shot with your bow exceeding a 90° angle to your side, and even then it is actually not a problem if you simply angle the bow 10 to 15° forward from the top. Go watch a video of the bow women in Siberia, and you will quickly see that they are neither encumbered nor impeded. I daresay, they may be some of the most skilled archers in the world. They are also using a heavier draw bow the Neolithic people and doing so from a horse. As Adrienne Mayor of Stanford writes, “if the concept of removing a breast was such an important symbolic attribute for the Greeks, then one must wonder why no single breasted Amazons appear in classical art.” (The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World. Breasts: One or Two. 2014. Pg. 88). Yes, the writer devotes an entire chapter to the silly myth. I remember my ancient mythology teacher in college laughing about how silly this myth was in wondering why it continues to propagate, even now.

Note: Even from nearly a 90° angle from her fore section, This woman is able to fire a bow without incident, and she also hits the target that on. That looks like a Hungarian horse bow, when I would really love to own because it’s one of the most beautiful bows. Whilst in Japan, I remember watching women firing large you need those without any problem, and I happen to be an archer myself. :bow_and_arrow:

b. You will find that the wounds suffered in the Neolithic vary quite broadly from arrows to hand axes (Talheim Death Pit - Wikipedia). I think you may be confused about draw weights. Heavy draw weights come from longbows, re-curves and of course modern compound bows. None of these existed during the Neolithic period. You will find that simple Neolithic bows have low draw weights compared to modern bows, though this is not to say that a heavy draw bow could not be made, but may not have been so common. (http://www.oxfordneolithicbows.com/history) I will be endeavoring to make a Neolithic bow from scratch using only Neolithic tools and techniques sometime this summer. I assume my Neolithic bow will be a lower draw weight than my current 55 pound draw recurve, a vastly more advanced design.

  1. The ability to determine egalitarianism is not simply limited to grave goods or even burial practices, though those are diagnostic components. The bone structure provides a significant insight into how food was handled within the society. Did men eat better than women or equally? This can easily be determined by looking at the bones which preserve markers such as potassium and strontium levels (Energy dispersive x-ray emissions fluoroscopy, EDXRF, is one technique that is used to do this, a technique that I perform, as well as gamma spectroscopy). The grave goods you mentioned also play a part. Were women and men buried with quality possessions and in a systemic manner? Lastly, did the bones reveal evidence of mistreatment? I suspect the best person to answer this question would be Dr. Ian Hodder (though when I spoke to him, my topic of interest was avian excarnation, not gender egalitarianism). His book, Catalhoyuk: the Leopard’s tale, discusses this at length. In lieu of asking you to buy a book, I will simply direct you to the Stanford Catalhuyuk research site. Section ‘1.4.1. Description of the Site.’ states that “The Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük is the best example of the agglomeration of people into egalitarian society in the Neolithic.” MANAGEMENT PLAN OF NEOLITHIC SITE OF ÇATALHÖYÜK. May 2013. http://www.catalhoyuk.com/sites/default/files/Catal_SMP_EN_Revised.pdf

3 History has many examples of where societies who allowed women in their ranks, and I’m not referring to special case scenarios such as Joan of arc. Examples include: Scythia, Sarmatia, Celtic/Germanic, Vikings, Romans.

I. The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World. Breasts: One or Two. 2014. Chapter 2 (There are many other good examples and citations, but I’m loving this book so I’m going to use it right now.

II.One of many examples. 2,500-year-old female Siberian warrior is beheaded by excavator 

III. “Thousands of tribal women, who had also fought the Romans and been taken prisoner, committed mass suicide in a last desperate act of protest, giving birth to the legend of Germanic heroism,” Fight in the Fog: The Battle of Vercellae on the Raudine Plain. October, 2016. http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/military-history/fight-in-the-fog-the-battle-of-vercellae-on-the-raudine-plain/
Iv. Mass Grave in England May Hold a ‘Lost’ Viking Army. LITTLE, B. FEBRUARY, 2018. http://amp.history.com/news/lost-viking-army-bones-discovery?__twitter_impression=true

V. In 2004, Hilary Cool And her team discovered the remains of cremated warrior women, cavalry, who had died in Brougham, and Were buried at a Roman fort, Brocavum.* Had it not been for her careful research as well as the significant evidence revealing the militant nature of the women, they might easily have been is categorized as male cavalry, perpetuating the notion of women as merely non-combatants.
*2004. The Roman Cemetery at Brougham, Cumbria: Excavations 1966 and 1967, Britannia Monograph 21 (London).

In fact, the idea that allowing women to fight would depopulate your society is based on the presuppositionl fiat that a significant percentage of fertile, younger women would be a military base for your populace, thus allowing the fantasy of a female depopulation initiated societal crash to work. The problem is that this first presupposes that large numbers of women want to join the military. We know from our own modern-day militaries, spanning many cultures, that a percentage of women want to join, but is not a vast percentage. Secondly, this further presumes that women will leave for battle and never return. Might women have accompanied their husbands or taken up arms to defend their tribe while the men are away? These last two scenarios are current hypotheses for steppes cultures.

An additional problem is that you’re mixing the concepts of Neolithic tribal society with later cultures such as bronze or Iron Age. In the Neolithic, a small tribe would likely not generate anything like an military. Perhaps a small raiding party might be sent out, but the numbers of people involved would be rather small. My supposition would be that women might even the defense of their tribe, but would probably not be likely to take part in such raid, in general. The advent of a single woman interesting herself in such a raid would hardly contribute to a gender-based societal collapse. Bronze Age societies were vastly larger and had the resources and sheer numbers of the population to form both militaries and to contribute women without significantly straining their society, at various proportions. You can use later civilizations as evidence to suggest that women do find their way into the military, but you have to be careful making backward comparisons based on two vastly differently organized societies, with respect to military tactics and societal impact.

  1. While I’m not sure I agree that women automatically make poor hunters of large game due to strength, where cunning is typically employed instead of strength, I would point out that large game hunting is actually not the primary food source in the Neolithic. Small game hunting, such as small animals, fowl, and fish comprise the vast percentage of food, besides the fields, that come into the tribe. If you look at contemporary tribal society, will discover that women perform a significant percentage of such food gathering.

Secondly, if we were to assume your statement that roles should be gender-based, not just as an opinion, but as some sort of fact, one first has to determine what gender has each role. Can you tell me which gender would be in charge of weaving and which gender would be in charge of pottery, as an example? Whether you know this or not, men have been in charge of weaving in many societies, though contemporary view typically paints this is a womanly task.

“Hand loom weavers were mainly men – due to the strength needed to batten,” Weaving:Hand loom weavers. Weaving - Wikipedia. Here we read of a typically womanly associated task being associated with men because of the male trait of average greater upper body strength; the exact opposite reason weaving is often associated with women. A juxtaposition. That statement flies directly in the face of the modern perception of weaving as a female task.

In fact, you would have to first establish what empirical evidence you have to form hypotheses of each task’s gender-association before you could move forward with determining who actually did it. So even if I accepted your statement at face value, you would then have to concede, due to intellectual honesty, that you would not be able to assign any task to a particular gender as there’s not much evidence for who completed each. Next, you would be forced to make most tasks gender-neutral or apply modern stereotypes, which is arguably the exact position you accuse me of without evidence. That’s an interesting circle isn’t it? Reciprocal juxtaposition, I should imagine lol.

  1. For starters, I would appreciate not being referred to as “honey.” That’s a term my lover can call me, and not a random person. You don’t even know my gender or anything about me. :wink: k?

The Amazons, as you call them, the Amazones andres, as the Greeks called them, are likely Scythians from the Black Sea. This is discussed at length in the book The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World, by Adrienne Mayor, Research Scholar, Classics and History and Philosophy of Science, Stanford University. She specifically writes: "In a nutshell: Amazons, the women warriors who fought Hercules and other heroes in Greek myth, were long assumed to be imaginative Greek invention. But Amazon-like women were real-although of course the myths were made up. Archaeological discoveries of battle scarred female skeletons buried with weapons prove that will like women really did exist among the nomads of the Scythian steppes of Eurasia (Mayor. 2014. Pg. 12). It’s really fascinating book, one of many on the topic, which goes into extensive detail of these various cultures and specifically focuses upon the actual evidence discovered by archaeologists, though she does explain a little bit of where many myths come from an common misconceptions people have.

Remember, it is you who have interjected the concept of a female-dominated army rushing off into battle, “butch,” none-the-less. This is not a position of mine, but your position which you have stated as my position and then gone on to attack. Normally this would be considered a strawman ad hominem attack, but I decided to entertain it with rebuttal. It is late at night and have a sugar cookie, so I am in the mood. :slight_smile:

I would rather respond to your final part, bit by bit lol

I can safely say that I haven’t been rebutted in such a pejorative manner in quite some time, though I can’t deny that it has provided me with a few minutes work replying, mostly spent supplying a select few from ample citations overtly and plentifully refuting your assertions, while trying my best to ignore the ad hominem.

The belief that women, who comprise half of the entire human race, should be given their proper spec respect and not treated as second-class citizens, nor have their achievements forgotten by archaeology, something which is happened all too often and is now beginning to be redressed by modern archaeology, should not be considered an argument of feminism, but a simple argument of equality. There is a strange misconception that is prevalent in today’s society, that the act of suggesting that a woman is more than some second-class citizen and should have equal rights to men is a wild and unhinged argument, a strange egalitarian pipedream of rabid feminists who delusionally forget their place under the boot of men. One might realize quite quickly that this is not a case of a feminist argument, but rather a aggresive, misogynist rebuttal to the, speculation of equality, based merely upon facts and evidence.

[Professor John R. Hale, Ph.D. University of Louisville Has an entire lecture on this particular topic. His 32nd lecture in the Great Courses series, Classical Archaeology of Ancient Greece and Rome, does a very good job of illustrating the problem archaeology has with a bias towards genderfication. He spends the entire lecture discussing the nearly willful removal of women from history, in spite of their overwhelming evidence. Of course, one can witness the sort of intellectual misogyny simply by listening to Plato. One might find the works of Sapphos of Lesbos of more interest, but she is rarely discussed.]

[Read about the Law of Innocents. It is almost a perfect rebuttal to your final statement about fallen mothers and abandoned children. That was probably a bad example to pick as it’s actually documented LOL A Monk came across a dead Pictish woman with her child, still alive, clinging to her body. As legend tells, the monk’s mother who traveled with him became incensed by this compelling the monk to create this famous law. If you want the exact quote of the monk, I’ll get it out of my trunk tomorrow. It’s in the Pictish warrior book from Osprey publishing, if you happen to have a copy. Let me know if you want the exact quote, though I actually added the transcript of the full law below LOL

[“3. The work which the best of women had to do, was to go to battle and battlefield, encounter and camping, fighting and hosting, wounding and slaying. On one side of her she would carry her bag of provisions, on the other her babe. Her wooden pole upon her back. Thirty feet long it was, and had at one end an iron hook, which she would thrust into the tress of some woman in the opposite battalion. Her husband behind her, carrying a fence-stake in his hand, and flogging her on to battle. For ^ at that time it was the head of a woman, or her two breasts, which were taken as trophies.” [IV. 12] AN OLD-IRISH TREATISE ON THE LAW of ADAMNAN, CAIN ADAMNAIN.] Full text of "Cáin Adamnáin : an old-Irish treatise on the law of Adamnan"

Here is an artist’s depiction of the scene which Precipitated the law. (the Picts are my ancestors \o/) It’s literally an image of the dead pic woman with a baby in her arms, a scene derived from ancient folklore of the incident which occurred which is directly the opposite of what you said. In case you think it’s simply an artists strange sense of art, consider that an entire set of laws was written because of this, though in all likelihood this was a simple precedent for a series of misogynist laws designed to repress women. A repression which continues.

Anyhow, that’s my rebuttal.

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On the famous “Russian fast shooting girl” video. Ah yes, this is an all time favourite of mine. It is important to note that this woman is using a 30 pound bow. Her bow has such low poundage that you could play Dagorhir with it so long as you padded the arrow tips with foam. So no, this isn’t a good example of archery.

"they may be some of the most skilled archers in the world"
Not with a 30 pound bow. I doubt you’d kill many animals with such a weak bow.

“if the concept of removing a breast was such an important symbolic attribute for the Greeks, then one must wonder why no single breasted Amazons appear in classical art.”
Maybe because it’s ancient porn. Mutilated women are not very titillating. Greeks valued the human body and it’s perfections. Besides, no historian will tell you that Greek pottery art is a valid source for determining what kinds of fighting styles or armour Greek soldiers wore. More often than not, warriors are depicted naked. It’s highly unlikely that men would fight naked when they had so much bronze armour easily available. Also, are you suggesting that the Amazons were real?

As for the second video, that bow is almost certainly not a powerful bow. I have used and owned many bows and even made 3 out of various trees. So I can attest from experience that holding a powerful bow at full draw is not easy. So either this woman is stronger than Olympic men, or we’re seeing another low poundage bow.

"None of these existed during the Neolithic period."
If you’re talking composite bows then you’re correct. However if you’re saying that longbows didn’t exist before the English invented them, then no. A longbow is simply a “long” (tall) bow. And it’s not some advanced technology either. Many such bows were used by Neolithic peoples. As evidenced by cave paintings and of course actual finds like the bow that famous Otzi the iceman had with him. That bow was 2 meters tall. Seems like a longbow to me.

"I will be endeavoring to make a Neolithic bow from scratch using only Neolithic tools and techniques sometime this summer"
That sounds fantastic! I wish you all the luck in the world. As for the draw weight, that depends. You could easily make it much more powerful than your recurve. Of course this is personal preference. But make no mistake, ancient bows were not low poundage. Do not forget that these people not only relied on bows for food, but also were much more knowledgeable about wood than most people alive today are. And they had better selection as much of Europe was still forested at the time (though not the fictitious unending dense forest often depicted in film)

"Did men eat better than women or equally?"
Very, very few societies would deprive women of food. Depriving women of food is like sending women into battle. Your tribe will perish. Do not forget that my criticism of female warriors works both ways. I am pointing out that women are more important for ancient societies than men. Starve a bunch of men or kill them in battle and a tribe can still go on. But starve women or kill them in battle and a tribe will likely fail to reproduce at replacement levels. And even malnourishing women is dangerous because malnourished women will be more susceptible to diseases and thus be unable to care for children.
To reiterate, individually women are more important for the continuation of a tribe or group than men are. So starving or otherwise needlessly risking their lives is more detrimental for an ancient society than risking the lives of men. This is why it is not surprising to see that women at Catalhuyuk were not more malnourished than men.
Also, well fed women is not an indication that women went into battle. That’s just silly. Nor is it an indication of egalitarianism and the lack of division of labour. It’s simply proof that starving women is not an evolutionarily beneficial strategy.

"Lastly, did the bones reveal evidence of mistreatment?"
What on earth are you trying to say? That the fact that women buried in catalhuyuk weren’t regularly bludgeoned to death by their husbands is proof that they lived in an egalitarian society? Look at the skeletons of women from any period and you will see that men did not usually bludgeon them or break their bones. Such a society wouldn’t last very long.
In fact, the fact that women are far less likely to show signs of violent trauma in graves is further proof that women were not ancient warrior women as feminists like to imagine.

"Joan of arc"
Not a warrior. Even in the French legends, she is never depicted literally fighting the English. She was at most a tactician and leader and more likely a mascot and figurehead for the army.

Also before I go on, I feel like you made a little typo I need to draw attention to.
"History has many examples of where societies who allowed women in their ranks"
I hope you’re not trying to imply that I am arguing that women didn’t have important roles in society. I made no such claim and in fact just earlier wrote that women are MORE important than men in ancient societies. I am only talking about women in ancient combat. Nothing more.

Anyway…

On the Siberian woman.
That is certainly sad to read. I cried when I heard that ISIS blew up Nineveh and other important sites. Obviously ISIS did so with evil intent, but still. It makes me sad to hear that the machinery destroyed the site.
Still, I need to point out that burial with high status objects is not an indicator that this woman was a warrior. As I pointed out earlier, women DID occupy important positions in society and this woman was likely (as the article pointed out) a member of the local aristocracy. Her other grave goods further indicates that she held a lofty position within the tribal aristocracy. This makes it even less likely that she actually fought in battle. Noble women would not need to fight in wars to defend their tribe.

On the Roman battle with the Cimbri, first of all you’re quoting an article that isn’t very well sourced. But forgetting that I think it’s important to point out that literally a few sentences later the author writes "Together, the Cimbri and Teutones fielded an army of between 180,000 and 200,000 (including women and children)…"
Yes, ancient bribes often brought women and children with them as camp followers and yes, when these tribes were defeated their women and children would often be captured if they couldn’t escape. But just because women and children accompanied men in wars (and I need to point something out here but bear with me!) doesn’t mean that they fought very often. I mean, if the fact that the women accompanied their husbands (for lack of a better word) on campaign proves that women were warriors, then it also proves that children were warriors too. Which is even more ridiculous.
Yes, some women and even some children did fight in desperate circumstances. But not often.

Now, remember how I mentioned that the Cimbri were at war? Well remember that this was no ordinary war either. This was an apocalyptic war for them. The author says that there were 200,000 people at this particular battle. That’s an entire population and while those numbers are suspect, it is reasonable to assume that there were a lot of people involved. This is because the tribe was waging what they believed was a war for their very survival. A last desperate struggle with an unstoppable foe. And the Romans were known for sacking and massacring entire cities when they could. So the men bringing their women and children with them is not that unusual. They had to because to leave them at home was to risk their rape and murder. The elderly were also likely with them too. If their number was even half of what the Romans said it was, their entire society was likely on the move.

Another example (and one that it hasn’t been brought up yet) of this was the Iceni revolt against the Romans. There too the Iceni warriors brought their women and children to watch the battle. I suspect that they had less “arrogant” reasons for doing so as well. I suspect the Romans left out the fact that they tended to rape and massacre entire villages when they caught the warriors away. So again, we have an example of men bringing their women and children with them to keep them safe.

"The problem is that this first presupposes that large numbers of women want to join the military."
What are you, some sort of sexist?!?
I kid, obviously. I agree with you. Women tend not to want to fight in wars. Women fight in other ways, as I am sure you know very well :wink:

"Might women have accompanied their husbands…"
Again, I agree with you. There are numerous examples of camp followers including the two examples you and I have already brought up. And lest I be accused of ragging on the Romans, they did it too. In fact women and even children did accompany the famously discipline Roman legionaries. And many cities existed outside Roman forts to house the families of the soldiers.

"or taken up arms to defend their tribe while the men are away?"
And once again, I agree with you. There are indeed numerous examples of women defending a tribe while the men were away. One example that jumps to mind was the failed siege of Tortosa when Muslim armies arrived at what they thought was an unguarded city (that had previously been taken from them) and they found that it was indeed guarded by many soldiers. What they didn’t know was that there really were only women and servants at the castle and that they had donned their husbands (for lack of a better word) armour and “manned” the ramparts. There may have been an actual engagement according to some stories where the Muslim attackers were defeated by the defenders.
Obviously this was not a Neolithic example, but it was what came to mind. It is proof that in times of desperation, women could and did pick up arms and fight. Children too. And the elderly. Like at the now famous battle of Visby where boys as young as 10 and men as old as 60 fought the well equipped Danes. Desperate times require unusual measures. However it’s important to remember that these are unusual circumstances. While genocides likely did occur in the Neolithic, most wars would not be so apocalyptic that every last man, woman, and child was needed for a last ditch effort to defeat an enemy. So again, women probably did not fight in battle very often.

"it’s the Neolithic, everyone had weaker bows LOL"
Inaccurate. I think you’re making the mistake of thinking that because you have a cheap modern bow that pulls only 55 pounds, it follows that your ancient ancestors were idiots who couldn’t make a bow half as powerful. This is inaccurate as I already pointed out with the Otzi bow. And it is plain silly. Your ancestors needed to hunt in order to survive. They had no use for play bows, instead they were using powerful bows for both hunting and for defense (and offense) against other tribes. A tribe that fielded 30 pound bows would be massacred by the smarter tribe that made 80 pound war bows. Also, spears, axes (some over 4 meters long!), and shields were also used. All requiring great strength to use.

"The game industry has bullied women around for a very long time"
Oh please. Feminists, with the power of the corporate media behind them have been pushing people around for decades. Feminists whine that Mario saving a princess is somehow causing men to mistreat women and using the power of the corporate media to bolster their attacks against videogames.
As for TERFs, I’m totally okay with TERFs. They want to keep to themselves and that’s fine with me. It is the arrogant feminists who want to dictate which games are politically correct enough to be allowed that piss me off. Demanding that others adhere to their ideology and they crying to the corporate media about “sexism” and “the patriarchy!” when gamers criticize them. Feminists love flinging shit at people but they’re too “dainty” to be criticized in return. But this has less and less to do with the Neolithic so that’s another thread for another website. TERFs are fine.

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Let me start off by pointing out that I may never have seen this many strawmen arguments used per inch of text. Constantly you propose arguments that I purportedly made, though I didn’t, and then attack them. This is by definition a strawman argument.

Secondly, I’m not sure that I’m going to reply anything else you say.

  1. You’re not talking about the Neolithic, but instead antiquity. Bringing up an example from antiquity to discuss the Neolithic is on topic, but you were almost entirely speaking about later time periods that have nothing to do with this game.
  2. Your lacing your entire post with strawmen, ad hominem, and unfounded assertions. Other people disagree with one another and don’t resort to calling each other “honey.”
  3. You aren’t actually talking about things that people have said, just asserting that things have been said that have not. For example, your husbands bludgeoning their wives comment. I never made that statement and I don’t recall anyone else making it, but you characterized me as having said it and then attacked me about it. That kind of argument, the ad hominem strawmen, will get you thrown out of any formal debate and is of course frowned upon in any academic circle.

So go ahead and reply if you wish, but don’t expect a rebuttal.

The reason I showed you this video wasn’t about her speed, though I believe I remarked how impressive it is. It was to show you that she is in no way encumbered nor impeded by having to breasts and a bow. There are literally thousands of female archers in the world with breasts of all sizes and shapes and bows of all types. The removed boob idea has been widely discredited for quite some time in archaeology.

Again, you’re making a big deal about her draw weight and speed the purpose of the video is to illustrate a response to your statement concerning the widely debunked belief that Amazon women, which by the way are not related to the topic of Neolithic people, chopped one breast off to enhance their ability to use a bow.

Archaeology does not interpret the majority of the artworks depicting Amazons as pornography (common knowledge). I don’t even know what universe you got that from. They were typically given as gifts to younger women during marriage (Mayer, pg.3-12). Amazons are depicted by the Greeks with wounds, in fact this is integral to the concept of “imperishable glory,” ‘kleos aphthiton’ (Mayor,28).

This is a anecdote assertion. She is using a horse bow specifically designed for this activity. You have absolutely no idea what her physical strength is

Otzi the Iceman was not from the Neolithic, so this is an equivocation fallacy.

In no way did I ever say that societies deprived women of food, this is an assertion you have just made as a strawman. Archaeologically, you can look at the calcification of bones, as well as the buildup of minerals and them to determine the quality and quantity of food eaten. It is not a matter of starving women but a simple difference in diet which can be diagnostic of differences in lifestyle between men and women. You have in fact missed the entire purpose of my statement, envisioned an argument I didn’t make and then attacked your own argument that you claimed I made. Strawman arguments are very annoying

This is a continuation of the last strawman ad hominem. I didn’t even make the statement that you call silly. Equality and food is an indicator of egalitarianism as an inequality of food would be by definition not egalitarian. An indicator is not proof of. To say something is diagnostic of or indicative of is not to say something is, but to suggest an indication of. He seemed continuously confused by this.

Again, you have now made another statement that I did not make and you’re attacking me for it. What you are looking for with bones are wear and tear of particular parts indicating what people did and the roles they played in life. When looking to see whether or not a skeleton was involved in battle, you look to see whether or not it has various markings made by wounds in some cases. If you go to the to talk to you website, they have a database of all the skeletons that they have found at the site. Special attention is paid to all markings found on the bones as well as significant information that has been learned from them. This is what actual archaeologists do. Various marks found on skeletons can be useful in determining something about how the person lived and died.

It is you have come to the conclusion that I’m referring to husbands beating wives to death or at least breaking their bones. Where did I ever say that? How did you come to that conclusion? You’re either doing extremely poor job of reading what I’m saying or your strawmanning me. I actually don’t know which is which.

I’m beginning to wonder if you’re simply trolling me. Do you see the quotes above? I literally state that I am not talking about Joan of arc. Let me say that one more time… I literally state that I am not talking about Joan of arc. This may be one of the most perfect examples of a strawman argument.

No, I’m not trying to imply that or I would have said that and not the completely different sentence that you just read, dismissed and then accuse me of saying something different from. So now you accuse me of straw manning you by straw manning me presenting argument that I didn’t make that would strawman you. How many levels of strawman will you take this too?

This is literally the sort of double standard Professor John R. Hale spoke of in the lecture I referenced last post. When a man is buried with weapons and armor, he is more likely to be considered a warrior than a woman. Similarly. In all honesty there’s no way to know for sure that any of these people are warriors, but it is presupposed that the woman is not and she requires overwhelming evidence, more than the man. This is based upon the belief that women are uncommon to find in battle and it perpetuates this preconception. Luckily, archaeologists are now beginning to turn away from this silly misogynist way of looking at things and re-examining older data to find what was missed. If you read the article, you’ll find that the archaeologists seem to come to different conclusions than you. Perhaps you have some information that you might share with them so they will come to understand that they are wrong and you are correct.

I wouldn’t bring up citations if I were you. You make assertion after assertion with no citations while I continuously site sources of varying accuracy. Secondly, you just made the assertion that the women were probably not warriors because it turns out that some women who follow armies are not warriors. There are also men who follow armies who are not warriors, such as craftsmen. Does that logic apply to them as well? As for children, if you read the law of innocence that was written by people who actually lived in that time. And purportedly based upon what they saw, they describe women of war with their children literally carried with them into battle. I’m going to assume that perhaps you did not read the text of the law of innocence and this is why you don’t realize this. I will believe purported eyewitness accounts from people who lived in the actual time over your personal assertion.

You make a lot of assertions once more, though thankfully no strawmen. By your own postulation, those women pressed into action by men would be warrior women, the same you continue to cast doubt upon. I would also point out that my arguments from many posts ago speak of women having the ability to aid in the defense of a tribe, not necessarily as offensive combatants. If that was your argument, you’re literally defending my argument. In fact, your statement literally defends my earlier statement but before you even entered this debate. Did you read the previous posts?

More importantly, I think you’re making a massive confusion over era. The reason that later warrior women have been brought up in discussion is simply to suggest that where women have existed throughout time and therefore imply that there could be precedent for them existing in prehistory. You are attempting to actually argue whether or not warrior women have existed throughout history and prehistory, to include antiquity. I hope your where that you’re making completely different arguments then this thread is about or that I have made. Perhaps you’ve confused reference to later warrior women as an example of where women, as being a thesis. Of course the majority of the arguments that you’re fighting against are made by you and declared to have been by me, your various strawmen

Yes, women children and even other men are quite often found following armies around. This is a well-known fact and has been witnessed throughout much of history in one way or another. This is what I was referring to. I was specifically referring to women combatants following around their men. The Steppes people are a good example of this. I can probably find a good citation once have had a chance to review my books on the topic, though I’m sure you can find many scholarly references to this as it’s basically common knowledge and archaeology

I’m sure you’ve read the previous post in this thread and you realize that your last two paragraphs do nothing more than reinforce statements that I’ve already made. The whole Amazon Army running around business isn’t actually my argument, but women being able to help with hunting and defense of the tribe, as well as an occasional woman potentially having interests involving an offense of attack is what I was referring to, with respect to the Neolithic period you gone so far off track at this point I figured I should probably remind you were talking about a time period 2000 to 5000 years earlier than the time. You’re talking about, at least

I don’t have a cheap modern bow. This would be an example of those assertions you keep making, although you tend to lace them with what could be considered personal attacks. I have a very nice recurve bow. Also, who made the statement about ancestors being idiots and that being a natural progression? Otzi is the wrong time period. I and I agree that it is silly as it has nothing to do with the time period in question nor does it have anything to do with anything I ever set. A 55 pound bow is not a play bow. A bow of less draw is still quite dangerous a skilled hand. I would be curious to know where you’re getting these ideas of the military capability of Neolithic people. You’re describing what sounds much more like late bronze or early Iron Age people. Neolithic people live in small tribes and there’s still a vast and open debate on the extent of any sort of military action they might have performed. About the only thing we know is that they made some fortifications, Palisade and hill forts as an example, and there were examples of massacres.

Video games are almost exclusively written in the male gaze. If you want to learn about the troubles women have with video games and the industry, wanted to go ask some as opposed to brushing off their comments. Go look at any game form and find a statement that a woman makes. The replies beneath it will probably tend to start with, “well, actually…” In fact, the very tone and methods of your replies to me are indicative of this very problem. Other people have disagreed with each other on this forum and they have not started out calling each other honey and attacking each other personally. The very fact that you have done that is literally an example of what I’m talking about. In fact I’ll simply cite you as an example.

I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you don’t know what TERF Stands for and what they represent. If I’m wrong and you do, then there’s nothing more for me to say to you.
Transgender Exclusionary Radical Feminist. You’re entitled to your own opinions of course, but if you like TERF’s, there’s really nothing more for me to talk to you about. TERF’s literally hate my kind and I do not associate with anyone who likes/is one.

(Mayor, A. The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World. 2014)

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"This may be one of the silliest myths that has never died. "

Do not laugh at silly myths. They have a serious purpose to disempower.

There is a modern equivalent “women cannot become fighter pilots because the uterus cannot withstand heavy G forces”, I heard that one from a very senior staff officer and fighter pilot, so I believed it. It is however complete bollocks as I later found out, in fact women withstand G forces better than men do.

A. Women of themselves only cannot be warriors when some are pregnant and young mothers.

B. Women shoulnt be warriors because a society is in peril if it loses women, while it doesnt require more than a handful of men to survive to continue.

Point A is a hard reality that is a backup confirmation for Point B which is the hard unforgiving truth. Point B is so hard, so unforgiving and so true that societies find out means to make it so. Either through religion, social pressure, team selection or myth, plus a dose of reinforcing reality because men are on average 10% physically superior.

So the first point of call is for women to think of support combat roles. o discourage this myths such as breasts getting in the way of archery are propogated. If the girls is 36 DD or has weak arms it may be very true, thus reinforcing the label.

Women warriors have existed throughout history, and the bow is the go to weapon pre gunpowder. This is well documented with harem guards and Bushi, though in both cases spears are also favoured. Women warriors however are normally exceptional in some way, naturally athletic and competitive because even in societies with martial females it is not the usual life path.

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