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DNA proves fearsome Viking warrior was a woman:
A 10th century Viking unearthed in the 1880s was like a figure from Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries: an elite warrior buried with a sword, an ax, a spear, arrows, a knife, two shields, and a pair of warhorses. [...] a new study published today in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology finds that the warrior was a woman—the first high-status female Viking warrior to be identified. Excavators first uncovered the battle-ready body among several thousand Viking graves near the Swedish town of Birka, but for 130 years, most assumed it was a man—known only by the grave identifier, Bj 581. [...] Now, the warrior's DNA proves her sex, suggesting a surprising degree of gender balance in the Vikings' violent social order.
Her name was Lagertha.
Reference: Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, et. al., A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23308
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @12:45PM
A burial site discovered in Peru shows that a Chachapoyas war band unit of Indian auxiliaries consisted of both men and women, and at the time of Pizarro their primary weapons were stone maces. Perhaps women were not as strong as men, but in a battle every pair of hands counts. Those chicks were grunts, peasants, not nobility. In times of great turmoil, when history is written, you'll see all humans, men, women, and sometimes even children, taking part. If they aren't, then whatever is going on is all just a make-believe.