medievalpoc:

bbrreeaaddffiisshh:

unobject:

ocassis:

And, in addition to these, there are many eunuchs among the Scythians, who perform female work, and speak like women.

—Hippocrates, On Airs, Waters, and Places

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

(the scythians aka the peoples likely referred to in greek history as “the amazons”)

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

WAIT, THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS ARE ASTOUNDING

If you click the link, it’s a fairly readable description of Third Gender people. Like so:

Such persons are called effeminates…to me it appears that such affections are just as much divine as all others are, and that no one disease is either more divine or more human than another, but that all are alike divine, for that each has its own nature, and that no one arises without a natural cause.

It’s obvious that Hippocrates thinks this is a disease caused by horseback riding, and his description is rather ethnocentric, since he assumes Scythian gods are the same the his own gods, as well as applying the rather misogynist Greek assumption that no one would “choose” to be a woman willingly.

But no doubt that they existed. Basically, the ones that Herodotus and Hippocrates knew were located approximately in what is now Iran.

Most of the existing artwork from Scythia that survives is gold and enamel jewelry and metalwork. It’s breathtakingly beautiful:

And also, there are surviving ornaments and metalwork that depicts Black people:

As for the Scythians being Amazons, what actually happened according to Herodotus is that the two peoples actually merged in relatively recent memory in relation to when he was writing about them.

You can read the entirety of Herodotus’s History of the Scythians and their merger with the Amazons here.

Basically, the practice of the men and women making war and hunting and whatnot along with the men began then, and yes, some of them were transgender women (and/or third and fourth gender people).

So, centuries pass, and you have the Indo-Scythian Empire:

And then, on to Mongolia, where the practice of women and men both making war and having political power continues until you have the rise of the Mongolian Empire.

They recently found a Scythian Mummy with tattoos and whatnot in Mongolia, in the Altai mountains.

German.

English.