(Archaeology) The myth of the Amazons, a tribe of bloodthirsty blond women thundering across arid battlefields to the horror of their male foes, has lingered for centuries. Their exploits seized the imagination of the Greek scribes Homer, Hippocrates, and Herodotus. But proof of their existence had always been lacking. Now, a 2,500-year-old mystery may have been solved, cracked by an American scientist whose ten-year odyssey led her tens of thousands of miles in pursuit of the truth. After unearthing evidence of a culture of ancient warrior women in the Russian steppes, Dr. Jeannine Davis-Kimball followed a trail of artifacts to a remote village in Western Mongolia, where her quest for a living link to a long-imagined tribe ended with a startling discovery. There, among the black-eyed Mongols, Davis-Kimball found a blond child, a 9-year-old girl named Meiramgul. Through DNA testing, Davis-Kimball finds that the DNA sequences of the warrior women and those from the girl of Mongolia are identical.

• Roy Scheider
• Tony Pollard