Archaeologists in Mongolia have found the remains of two ancient female warriors, whose skeletal remains indicate that they were well practiced in archery and horse riding.
These two women lived during the Xianbei period (147 to 552 AD), a period of political fragmentation and unrest that gave rise to the Ballad of Mulan, the researchers said.
Perhaps these women were so athletic because during the Xianbei period, “it may have been that women were necessary to defend home and country alongside men,” said study researchers Christine Lee and Yahaira González, bioarchaeologists at State University of California in Los Angeles.
Lee added that many historians attribute Mulan to the Xianbei period. There’s a lot of research on the Ballad of Mulan and “my research just reinforces what they’ve been finding,” Lee told LiveScience.
The remains of the elder warrior (left) and her husband, which were excavated at the Airagiin Gozgor archaeological site, in the Orkhon province of northern Mongolia. (Image credit: Christine Lee)
In the ballad, Mulan serves in the army so her father doesn’t have to; but at that time, China did not have conscription, Lee said. Additionally, the ballad notes that Mulan was fighting for the khan, a term used to refer to Mongol leaders. However, Chinese authors were the first to transcribe the ballad, which is probably why it is considered a Chinese story, Lee said.
The research, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, was scheduled to be presented at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’ annual conference in mid-April, until the meeting was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Lee has worked in China and Mongolia for the past 16 years. She discovered the remains of the two warriors during an excavation of a cemetery at the archaeological site of Airagiin Gozgor, in the Orkhon province of northern Mongolia. Over the past four years, Lee and her colleagues have analyzed ancient human remains from 29 elite burials (16 men, 10 women, 3 unknown) at the site, looking for signs of prolonged horseback riding, archery and trauma.
In particular, he noted the bone marks of the muscle insertions, as larger marks indicate that the muscles were heavily used; for example, during archery. Repetitive motion markers on the thumb were also indicative of archery, Lee said. She also looked for patterns of spinal trauma that are common in people who ride horses.
While many of the men and teenagers had signs suggesting archery and horseback riding, and some of the women had markings indicating they practiced one or the other, the two female warriors had signs of both, said Lee, who is the researcher. main of the study. study.
“They were probably pretty rough,” Lee said. “They are doing what men do. So, you can extrapolate from that [and say] that they have some gender equality.”
Any form of gender equality was momentous for that period in Asia. “At that time, in neighboring China, women were confined,” Lee said. “The ideal woman was helpless and docile, whereas being in the north [in Mongolia], she is not.”
The Mongol culture did not have a written language before Genghis Khan (1162 to 1227), but other cultures, including the Chinese, Koreans and Persians, wrote about the Mongols, Lee said. Around the year 900 AD. C., women in Mongolia enjoyed freedoms not found in contemporary cultures; The Mongols had queens who led armies and received emissaries from the pope, Lee said. Additionally, women could inherit property and decide who they wanted to marry, she said.
“If they’re already so independent in 900 AD, my thinking was that you can extrapolate back at least a couple hundred years, because it has to come from somewhere,” Lee told LiveScience.
She noted that the Chinese were writing propaganda about Mongolian women, “because they said that [women having power] was a bad thing, and that’s horrible, and that these women have too much freedom and they’re whores and they make horrible wives.”
In essence, the Chinese looked down on anyone who lived north of the wall, Lee said.
Of the two female warriors, one was over 50 years old and the other was in her 20s. They may have practiced archery and horseback riding because these skills were necessary during the political instability that followed the collapse of the Han dynasty in China in 220 AD, Lee said.
None of the women had signs of war trauma. This could be because both women were found in elite tombs, and elite people may not have fought in battles, Lee said.
