Monday, September 15, 2014

Female Vikings: The Amazons Have Competition

A recent archaeological discovery learns that half of Viking warriors were female. Perhaps inequality is a more novel invention.

Scandinavian Warrior Goddess.
A time before the yellow and blue flatpack was the best the Nordic countries offered us.

The news has a lot of stories that people with a kinky mind interpret slightly different. Scientists recently discovered that the ancient Greeks using slaves as auditors so they could be beaten when they screwed up. We should have that in place for today's bankers. It would have saved us all a lot of money and misery the past decade or so.

Even more interesting is a recent archaeological discovery that being a Viking warrior was not an exclusive male thing. Previously researchers identified any skeleton buried with its sword and shield as male. Female remains were identified by their oval brooches. Sloppy science which is as dumb and biased as it sounds. Maybe we should start whipping scientists too. When Australian scientists studied skeletons' bones they discovered that about half of the skeletons were actually female. One should be careful to infer to much from a small sample but it certainly will shed a new light on the travels and conquests of the Vikings over a millennium ago.

Of course there have been women fighters all throughout history. The most recent example is that of Kurdish female fighters taking up arms against Islamic State.

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