The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set

by N. S. Wikarski

  The men remained silent, pondering the question.

  Stefan sighed. “That is, how you say, the crux of the matter. At the Kurgan trove, we are not only collecting artifacts of these tribes. We are seeking to trace all the way back to when they were like the rest of the world. Peaceful and not all the time killing.”

  “Good luck,” Cassie said ruefully. “That’s got to be one heck of a riddle to solve.”

  “It isn’t as hopeless as all that,” Griffin observed. “While we still lack a good deal of concrete evidence, we do have some fairly plausible theories as to why they became overlords.”

  “I’m all ears.” Cassie sat back on the couch and folded her arms, ready for a long lecture.

  Just at that moment, a young Turkish woman in an apron walked up to the group and asked in English if they would like something from the bar.

  “Bar? What bar?” Fred turned to look around the parlor.

  The waitress gestured toward the opposite end of the room. None of them had noticed the bar tucked away in a dark corner. At this hour of the afternoon, it was completely empty.

  The group ordered various soft drinks, and the woman walked off to fetch their refreshments.

  Picking up the thread of their conversation, Griffin said, “It’s highly likely that in the beginning, the Kurgan tribes weren’t very different from the rest of the world. They were most certainly goddess-worshipping and traced their family tree through the female line. The sexes would have been more or less equal. They moved about from place to place pasturing their flocks on lush grasslands. This state of affairs would have continued for a few thousand years until the climate shifted and the steppes began to dry out. It may have taken several centuries to notice a significant change, but eventually, there would have been less land suitable either for farming or for grazing. Water became scarce.”

  “A harsh landscape produces harsh people,” Cassie observed. “Didn’t you tell me that once?”

  “I may have done,” Griffin replied. “At any rate, it’s true. Life on the steppes became more difficult. Resources dwindled. When such conditions occur rapidly enough, they foster a mental attitude of desperation and competition. To these nomads, taking by force what was needed may have seemed a reasonable option.”

  Erik continued the narration. “There’s only one problem with stealing from the neighbors. They don’t like it very much, and they tend to retaliate. This sets up a pattern where tribes are constantly skirmishing with each other either to defend their own stuff or to steal somebody else’s. All of a sudden, battle skills start to get real important. You’ve got a bunch of people who spend most of their time practicing with weapons or actually using them to clean each other out.”

  “Dog eat dog. Sounds like a rotten way to live,” the pythia commented.

  “And it wasn’t only the men who were trained in battle,” Griffin added. He turned toward the Kurgan trove keeper. “Tell her, Stefan.”

  “That is so,” Stefan agreed. “In the Kurgan homeland in southern Russia, many women warriors are buried with weapons. Their bones show battle injuries.”

  “Really?” Cassie sat forward, intrigued.

  “Most certainly,” Stefan continued. “Here is a very interesting picture.” He hastily flipped through his photo album to a page at the front. The image showed a faceless mannequin dressed in leggings and a jacket embroidered with hundreds of small squares of beaten gold. The figure wore a tall conical hat. It stood in a museum display case.

  Cassie looked up at Stefan quizzically. “I don’t get it.”

  The trove keeper laughed. “This costume came from a rich kurgan grave in Kazakhstan that the tomb robbers missed. It is now in a national museum. Archaeologists have long called it ‘The Golden Man.’”

  “OK, so?” Cassie asked warily, sensing there was more to the story.

  Griffin leaned toward the pythia and gave her a hint. “Remember the so-called Prince of Lilies on Crete?”

  “You’re kidding. You mean this is a woman?”

  The trove keeper nodded energetically. “We are most sure it is. The grave contained weapons, and it used to be that whenever archaeologists found a grave with weapons, they automatically said it was a man buried there. Nobody bothered to look at the skeleton.”

  “Remember what I told you when I first showed you the vault?” Griffin interjected. “Mainstream archaeologists make assumptions about what they’re seeing, and those assumptions are steeped in overlord cultural values.”

  Cassie studied the photo. “But how can you be sure this costume belonged to a woman? Did anybody examine the body?”

  “The government does not allow us to look.” Stefan sighed. “We were not there at the time the digging was done, and now it was too late.” He brightened. “But the grave goods, they tell us the story. The earrings and jewelry that men do not wear. The polished mirror that is always found in the graves of shaman priestesses. The tall hat that is a sign of women of rank among the steppe peoples. No male grave has been found anywhere with these objects along with the weapons.”

  “It’s very likely that she wasn’t merely a priestess. She may have been one of the royals of her tribe,” Griffin added. “This is a Saka costume, and the Saka culture had many queens. The Scythians and the Sarmatians, who were related to them, did also.”

  “Yes, the Sarmatians I know well,” Stefan added eagerly. “They left their homeland north of the Black Sea, and the legend tells that they settled in my country of Poland a very long time ago. The women were very warlike. The tribe had a custom that a girl would not be allowed to marry until she had killed a man in battle.”

  “That’s my kind of gal.” Cassie laughed.

  At that moment, the waitress returned bearing a tray of glasses and cans. She set it down on the table, and the group helped her pass around the order. They busied themselves with flipping tabs on cans and pouring the contents into glasses while they waited for her to retreat back into the lobby. When she was out of earshot, Griffin turned to Cassie and said, “Your kind of gal? I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty.” He pretended to sound shocked. “Really, I’m appalled.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the pythia rolled her eyes. “Get on with the story.”

  The scrivener complied. “Stefan’s evidence suggests that the steppe nomads were not rigidly male-dominated early in their history. They maintained many of the matristic customs of the cultures that surrounded them. While it’s certainly true that the steppes were a harsh land that brought out the fiercest and most aggressive tendencies in humans, it would be safe to assume that those combative traits were not limited to the male sex.”

  “OK, I get the picture,” Cassie said. “These tribes are hungry and thirsty which makes them mean and desperate. They get horses which makes them mobile, so they all mount up, charge out of the steppes, and start whacking everybody else.”

  The men exchanged looks.

  “Well, not exactly,” Fred hedged.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not all of them left. In fact, most of them stayed right where they were, raiding and pillaging each other.”

  “But what about the flood of barbarians sweeping across Europe and killing everything in their path?” Cassie felt confused.

  “You’re thinking of Genghis Khan,” Erik corrected. “That was thousands of years later.”

  “It wasn’t a massive flood,” Griffin added. “More like a slow trickle.”

  “Well, somebody trickled out of those steppes and changed history,” Cassie challenged. “Tell me who they were.”

  The scrivener paused and considered a moment. “Do you know the story of Hengest and Horsa?”

  Cassie gave him a withering look. “Excuse me. Have we met?”

  Griffin smiled. “You were doing so well today I thought you’d like to try for three right answers.”

  “Nope, two’s my limit. I wouldn’t want to take away your job. Go ahead and tell the
story.”

  “Ahem,” the scrivener pointedly cleared his throat. “Hengest and Horsa were two brothers who belonged to the Anglo-Saxon tribes of Germany. They came to Britain in the fifth century to offer their services as mercenaries to King Vortigern who was having some difficulties with the Picts at the time. When the king asked them why they had left their homeland, Hengest answered that it was a custom among his people that when the tribe became too numerous, the leaders would summon all the fittest and bravest youths in the land. These would draw lots to determine who would have to leave the community in order not to become a burden on the resources of the rest. Those who were selected by the lottery would be expected to pack up their weapons, mount their horses and seek their fortune out in the world from that day forward.”

  “That means these guys were Kurgans,” Cassie offered doubtfully.

  “Very, very distant descendants of them, yes,” Griffin replied. “A legend of twin brothers with equine names goes all the way back to the proto Indo-Europeans. The story is important because it establishes a historic precedent for the custom. It’s quite likely something similar occurred among the steppe tribes. When faced with the problem of dwindling resources, the most able of them would be expected to leave. They would have chosen youths who had proven battle skills so that they could take care of themselves when faced with difficulties.”

  “But weren’t they afraid of leaving themselves defenseless?” the pythia objected. “If they were surrounded by enemies, why would they send off their best fighters?”

  “They didn’t necessarily send their best fighters away,” Erik weighed in. “The older, more experienced ones would have stayed at home. They sent away their most expendable fighters. Adolescent males mainly.”

  “Teenagers?” Cassie was shocked.

  Fred joined the discussion. “Not teenagers in the way we think of them today. Life expectancy back then was a lot shorter, so kids had to grow up fast. These boys would have started training with weapons around the age of seven. By the time they were fourteen, they would have been on active raids. They were hardly defenseless.”

  “Almost like street gangs.” Cassie was chilled by the parallel.

  “And think about where they were headed,” Erik added. “They had a huge advantage over the matristic tribes who didn’t have horses or lots of experience with weaponry. It was all easy pickings.”

  “But the Kurgans must have been seriously outnumbered,” Cassie objected.

  Erik shook his head. “That wouldn’t have mattered. They had a technological advantage. When Cortez conquered the Aztecs, who numbered in the millions, he did it with six hundred men, twenty horses, and ten cannons.”

  “Yikes!” Cassie exclaimed. “So basically, a pack of testosterone-crazed punks with fast horses and pointy weapons were turned loose on a tribe of lettuce farmers.”

  “Grim but accurate,” Griffin concurred.

  Boisterous laughter coming from the lobby caused them all to turn and look up. A party of German tourists had just arrived to check in. Their luggage carts were filled with hiking equipment. One of their number wandered into the parlor carrying a heavy backpack. He looked briefly around the room. Smiling and nodding toward the Arkana team, he strolled back into the lobby.

  They paused in their conversation to see if any more sightseers would straggle in.

  When the noise in the adjoining room quieted down, Stefan broke the silence. “There is one more interesting fact. It is very possible that not all the warrior bands who left the homeland were males.”

  Cassie stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “He’s talking about the Amazons, toots,” Erik prompted.

  “But that’s just a myth, isn’t it?” Cassie turned to the security coordinator for confirmation.

  “Nope.”

  “Actually, the theory that female warrior bands also migrated would go a long way toward explaining the Amazon stories,” Griffin said. “Ancient chronicles described tribes of warrior women in the Ukraine, northern Greece, Bulgaria and even as far away as Libya in northern Africa. Conventional historians dismiss the Amazons as fanciful legends, but it’s far more likely that they really existed and that they weren’t a single tribe but many bands of female warriors migrating out of the steppes at various times.”

  “It is important to remember that all these things happened long before they were written down,” Stefan added. “The first men who recorded stories of such women were living three thousand years later.”

  Cassie frowned at a troubling thought. “But why wouldn’t the boy Kurgans and the girl Kurgans all migrate together? Didn’t they believe in co-ed conquest?”

  Griffin hesitated, seemingly to consider the question. “This is all speculation on my part you understand, but I believe that the female migrants represented a second wave. The males would have been the first group to leave a tribe whose supplies were already strained to the limit. Males are more biologically expendable. The survival of the tribe as a whole depends on the existence of females capable of giving birth to the next generation. A far smaller number of males are needed for procreation. However, let us suppose that a particular tribe is in such dire straits that even adolescent females represent a drain on its resources. If the males have already departed, then that leaves young women as the most likely group to migrate away from the homeland.”

  Cassie nodded, satisfied with the explanation. “I suppose that would be the reason why there were fewer female bands roving around looking for new territory and why they weren’t traveling with males. They left as a last-ditch effort. But if that’s true, then what happened to all of them? We know all about the male Kurgans, but it’s like all the female warrior tribes went extinct.”

  Griffin smiled broadly. “That is an excellent question and one that brings us to the very brink of explaining the origins of patriarchy.”

  Stefan grinned. “This is where we are getting excited, yes?”

  Cassie darted him an odd look.

  Fred leaned over and whispered, “He means that this is the exciting part. The missing link.”

  Cassie nodded and smiled encouragingly at Stefan. “Yes, very exciting,” she concurred.

  Griffin was about to speak, but he cut himself short when the waitress re-entered the parlor to ask if they needed anything. Everyone politely declined and waited in silence until the echo of her footsteps faded across the lobby floor.

  Cassie emptied the last of her cola into a glass. Then she turned to Griffin and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You can start any time now.”

  “Very well. There is one distinct difference in the behavior of male overlords versus female overlords.” He paused. “Females don’t need to acquire females.”

  Cassie tipped her head and eyed him dubiously.

  He continued. “Female overlords are already the means of their own reproduction. If they wish to have children to inherit their property, they can mate with any passing male and go on their way. They retain the children and have indisputable proof of lineage since they gave birth to them. Their matrilineal kinship system and inheritance remain intact. Unfortunately, their male overlord brethren aren’t so fortunate. With no women in their band, they could no longer trace their descent through their mothers. Property would have to pass through the male line. If they wanted their children to inherit the wealth they acquired through conquest, they needed to be sure those children were theirs.”

  “Not so easy for the Kurgan boys,” Cassie speculated. “Since they were all bachelors when they shipped out, they had to get wives from the local population.”

  “Precisely,” Griffin nodded. “We’re back to bride abduction which we discussed earlier.”

  “It may go a long way toward explaining the kind of misogyny that’s typical of patriarchal cultures,” Fred observed. “After all, if you slaughter a girl’s family and then expect her to cozy up to you, you’re always going to be sleeping with the enemy.”

&n
bsp; “Not to mention the laborious problem of having to control a wife’s sexual activity in order to prove the offspring belonged to a particular overlord male,” Griffin added. “Most matristic cultures were sexually free. Even those that practiced monogamy often allowed for other sexual attachments. How could a Kurgan male know his own progeny except by forcing his wife, or wives, to remain sexually exclusive? A virtually impossible task which the overlords solved by severely curtailing the freedom of women to move about in society. Females were restricted to living in harems or under house arrest.”

  “That’s pretty grim, but what’s it got to do with the extinct female overlords?” Cassie asked.

  “Simple biology,” Fred answered. “A female warrior gives birth to maybe five children over the course of her lifetime. A male warrior who practices polygamy can father fifty to a hundred children over the course of his.”

  “And don’t forget the gender bias that is beginning to form among the male overlords,” Griffin offered. “They are surrounded by foreign women who belong to the race of the conquered. These women are considered inferior and need to be controlled to guarantee paternity. Overlord men want sons to inherit their riches because sons can be taught to fight. Even though Kurgan women were good at defending themselves, the overlord men certainly aren’t going to teach their indigenous brides battle skills, or they might turn around and kill their husbands. As a consequence, females become sexual commodities, lineage is traced through the father, and we’re well on our way to patriarchal cultural norms. These male overlord cultures would eventually outnumber the overlord female territories and conquer them.”

  “But didn’t they recognize they came from the same tribes as these female warriors?” Cassie objected.

  Erik shrugged. “How could they know? It took thousands of years for all this to play out. In a space of three hundred years, how many African-Americans know what tribe their ancestors came from?”