Curio Cabinet

For ages now, anthropologists believed Amazonian warriors were a myth concocted by the ancient Greeks. But a slew of recent discoveries has stacked up evidence that the female warriors not only existed, but were numerous. As a refresher, Amazons were given mythic status in ancient Greek stories. They were reputed to live in a lesbian matriarchy and excel in combat. Along with carrying spears, they allegedly cut off one of their breasts to better fire their bows. The Amazons were also said to have allied with Troy against the Greeks during the Trojan War. The Greek accounts place the Amazonian society in southwestern Russia. This is why a recent archaeological discovery in the western Russian village of Devitsa is so exciting. There, a 2,500-year-old tomb housing four women was excavated. The intombed women, ranging in age from 12-50, were decked out in horseback riding gear and weapons traditionally associated with the Amazons. The oldest woman was buried in a horseback stance and crowned with a basket-shaped headdress called a calathos, which is 65-70 percent gold. This is important because archaeologists confirmed these women were Scythians. Scythians were an ancient nomadic people who lived along the Eurasian Steppe. Most Scythian jewelry is only 30 percent gold. Which means the oldest woman in the tomb was highly regarded. Nearly one-third of Scythian women were buried with weapons, according to recent findings. What makes this particular discovery so special is that the tomb contained multiple generations of women in armor with weapons. This means Scythian society was truly egalitarian in regard to the sexes. Scythian girls were trained alongside boys in combat and horse riding because everyone needed to contribute to survive on the harsh steppes. All the fanciful rumors of a maleless lesbian society that self-mutilated come from the patriarchical Greeks. It's likely that female Scythian warriors both disturbed and fascinated Greek men, who were accustomed to servile Athenian women. Hmm... something tells me the Greeks were insecure about their masculinity (or smitten) when they met Scythian women on the battlefield!

A physician's secret passion for words.

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but Peter Roget's invention was worth about 15,000 when it was first published over a century and a half ago. Roget's Thesaurus was the first of its kind to act as a cross-reference work for word lovers looking for precision, perfection, or piqued curiosity. With its immense popularity over the past 200 years, it's a wonder that Roget himself actually kept his handbook a secret for many decades of his life.
 

Forget the "strong and silent type." Peter Mark Roget was an effusive polymath and physician. Born on January 18, 1779, Roget rose through the ranks of British society to eventually become the first Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution in London. His endless curiosity and immense knowledge in other aspects of life led him to publish scientific papers. These treatises advocated for water sanitization and a sewage system in London, the development of the film-predecessor animation device called the Phenakistoscope, or offered contributions to the Encyclopedia Britannica. With all of Roget's prestige and intellectual achievements, it might be hard to fathom what biographers identify as a muse for his lexicography pastimes: depression. Roget was said to have suffered from the condition throughout his life, and took up list-making as a coping mechanism by the age of eight. This habit likely fueled the earliest version of Roget's thesaurus, which was said to have been solely for his personal use, and completed in just one year at the age of 26 in 1805.
 

The ensuing nearly 50 years would find Roget adding to his collection, but never publishing it. As he retired in the 1840s, Roget began serious work on his grand list of word references. He gave it the title "thesaurus" from the ancient Greek word for a "treasure storehouse." In a nod to 18th-century zoologist Carl Linnaeus' classification of animal species, Roget gave his work six sections: Abstract Relations, Space, Matter, Intellect, Volition, and Affections. For Roget, his arrangement of words wasn't just meant to find synonymous meanings (although that is a major benefit of his invention). No, replacing words with no finesse for context or meaning wouldn't suffice. Roget himself noted, "it is hardly possible to find two words having in all respect the same meaning, and being therefore interchangeable." Rather, he intended an exploration and discovery of word usages, sparking the imagination in the process. For example, the act of linking the word "state"—meaning "tone, tenor, turn; trim, guise, fashion, light, complexion, style, character"—in all its various nounal, verbal, adjectival, and adverbial forms points back to the delight or comfort Roget found in categorizing these words and being able to draw them up at will through his reference manual.
 

The first edition of Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition was published in 1852. Since then, it has never been out of publication, with Roget's son, Jon, expanding the index for quick reference in 1869. The work has since sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Famous writers like Sylvia Plath and David Foster Wallace swore by Roget's as a trusted companion to their craft, even as esteemed critics lambast its synonym-finding aspects and the popularity it has with people who mainly use it to write or solve crossword puzzles. According to Roget's first edition, those critics might be suffering from a bit of "jealousy, jaundiced eye; envious suspicion," or a "green-eyed monster"!
 

Below: a drawing of Peter Roget.
 

Image credit & copyright: Diane Salerni
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Happy May Day! The United States has a long history of refusing to honor the significance of May 1st as a day for workers. As we learned in Curio #1140, on May 1st, 1884, workers in Chicago organized a nationwide strike of luxury Pullman train cars. At the time, labor movements around the world were battling for fair labor practices like the 8-hour workday and the right to unionize. After President Grover Cleveland called in the military to break up the Pullman strike—resulting in mass violence and mayhem in Chicago—he hastily arranged for a bill to be passed declaring Labor Day as a September holiday. He hoped it would distract from the violence he had just caused in Chicago, and quell those calling for May 1st to become an annual day to air workers' grievances. It didn't work. Two years later on May 1st, 1886, workers across the US coordinated strikes for the 8-hour workday. In the ensuing days, one such labor demonstration at Chicago's Haymarket Square turned deadly. A bomb was thrown at police officers, killing one. In the resulting riot, seven more officers and four protesters were killed. Dozens were wounded.
 
Labor movements around the world took notice of the events in Chicago. In 1889, the Second International socialist organization declared May 1 as International Workers' Day—in honor of the Haymarket Square affair. By 1904, the date was being used to organize "trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically." Today it is an especially important holiday in Communist countries like China, North Korea and Cuba. Celebrations in those places feature massive nation-wide parades, often including shows of military power. But here in the US we'll be wrapping ribbons around tall poles and buying mattresses on sale. Consumers of the world, unite!