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 Greeks. 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 16 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. Hippocrates 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,” he wrote. “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.”