No fancy cuffs but these early warriors were the real deal

At first glance, Wonder Woman might seem to be your standard-issue comic-book superhero – she’s brave, has biceps to die for and generally kicks baddie ass. But, as John Man reveals in this lively book, she has real ancestral sisters. Thousands of years ago, groups of female warriors roamed the grasslands of central Asia, fighting to keep their communities safe. They were called Amazons – a name that’s been hijacked to describe any woman who is brave, bolshy and refuses to know her place.

Man starts by clearing up a few myths. It’s not true, for instance, that the original Amazons had their right breasts removed in order to make it easier to draw back their bows when shooting from horseback. The confusion probably arose because when later Greek artists set about drawing the Amazons – with whom they had something of an erotic obsession – they showed them with one bared breast.

It turns out that not everyone is comfortable with the idea of powerful female forebears. Man tells the story of how, in 1969, a 5th century BC warrior’s tomb was discovered in Cossack country. The body itself was small but there was no mistaking the magnificence of the jacket decorated with 2,400 arrow-shaped gold pieces. The Golden Man became so famous that he was adopted as the symbol of the new nation of Kazakhstan.

So you can imagine how delicately American scientist Jeannine DavisKimball had to tread when she recently suggested to the authorities that the Golden Man was more likely a warrior princess.

The authorities, though, were having none of it. A few days after DavisKimball applied to do DNA testing on the bones to establish the gender of the Golden Man, she was told that the skeleton could no longer be located.

It is a shame Man doesn’t stick to describing the Amazonians of the ancient world. Instead he strays off topic into the Amazon river and the amazon website and it’s all a bit undisciplined – one accusation you could never throw at those early women warriors.