Imagine an enemy army on horseback heading in your direction, shooting hundreds of poison-tipped arrows into the sky, launching javelins, wielding iron blades, and slinging bullets made of lead. If you’re lucky enough to survive the first onslaught, a silent lasso is likely to pull your feet from under you, the impact of the fall knocking your breath away as your killer swiftly approaches. The last thing you see are her tattooed arms reaching up as she lands the pointed end of her battle axe into your skull.
This is what it was like to face the Scythian [SITH-y-an] women warriors, or Amazons, who roamed the expanse of land from the western Black Sea to the Central Asian mountains from about 600 BCE to 400 CE.
While scholars once believed the Amazons were pure myth, recent archeological findings of burial mounds, called kurgans, have backed up Greek, Persian, and Chinese accounts of fearsome bands of nomadic women. And along with weapons, gold, and sacrificed horses, skeletons of these warrior women were buried with personal cannabis-burning kits.
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For these ancient warrior women, cannabis was a part of everyday life
Cannabis Flower by Elsa Olofsson is licensed under CC BY 2.0