Ancient Armenian Female Warrior Suffered Hatchet Wounds And Arrow Blow Before Death

[Judi Lynn]

Madison Dapcevich
By Madison Dapcevich
29 NOV 2019, 15:51

More than 2,000 years ago, a young Armenian woman found herself at the forefront of a battle. Now, her newly unearthed remains are allowing archaeologists a window into how ancient societies lived and died on the battlefield.

Researchers excavated the poorly preserved remains in 2017 and found the woman buried on her side with flexed arms and legs and her head oriented to the northwest. Her skeleton was “fragmented and incomplete,” with cracks and fractures occurring on her bones in the thousands of years since her burial. An analysis of her dental wear, cranial sutures, and other indicators of trauma allowed for an understanding of the type of injuries she suffered just before her death.

A metal arrowhead was found buried in her femur likely shot by a bow, strongly suggesting that the woman was injured in some type of combat. Healing around the site of the arrowhead indicates that she lived for some time with the injury before dying, possibly from additional sword or hatchet blows to the pelvic bone, femur, and tibia in a “rich array of traumatic lesions.”

“During the combat, the woman had been most likely exposed to direct blows to the defensive shield (the power transmitted from the end of the shield to the ulna), or direct blows when the forearm was used to ward off the blow,” study author Anahit Khudaverdyan told IFLScience.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/ancient-armenian-female-warrior-suffered-hatchet-wounds-and-arrow-blow-before-death/

[Karadeniz]

1. Other skeletons indicating combat? I'm wondering if she could've been a civilian on the

Receiving end of an enemy raid. Those ancient armies could be pretty brutal to civilians.

[magicarpet]

2. Maybe 5 or 6 Turk warriors happened by when she was walking...

... home from the community well and they decided to have some fun and pulverized her just for shits and giggles.

The Turks were notoriously nasty to the Armenians. Kind of what they are dishing out to the Kurds now.

They don't like to publicly admit it, but the Turks are a blood thirsty lot.

[Vogon_Glory]

3. 2000 years ago, It was probably the Kurds, the Persians, the Romans, or

Somebody else.

[Collimator]

4. I definitely appreciate your concern for what is happening to the Kurds and others.

Something worth keeping in mind, though, is the brutal reality of life long ago.

There is some disagreement between scholars as to whether or not the Vikings were such "bad guys" back in the day, but there is no denying their capacity for violence. Yet, today, the Scandinavian people are considered very enlightened.

The Romans brought many of the trappings and social structures of what we like to call civilization, but they were incredibly harsh and violent in so many of their customs.

I happened to catch a portion of an episode on PBS called "The Violence Paradox". Believe it or not, even though it sounds extremely counterintuitive, our species is becoming less violent. I suppose that I am bringing this up in the hopes of making you feel better, (and myself) and perhaps it means nothing to the people suffering today.

There are bloodthirsty elements in every human group, I fear. What is more important than anything is not normalizing their behavior and NOT letting them have ruling power in any society.