Women Warriors: Hidden in History

Women Warriors: Hidden in History is part of Crabtree’s new series, “Hidden History”. The six books in the series are written by four different writers but have a consistent format and presentation. Each book is organized into chapters by geographic locations – Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa.

Each book begins with a chapter titled “History’s Hidden Heroines” that gives context to the particular group of women featured in the book and explains why we don’t know more about women’s achievements.

So, Why Can’t We Read All about It?
When human civilization first started to grow, between 40,000 B.C.E. and 5000 B.C.E., women in many cultures had great status. They were priestesses, they owned property and land, and they healed people with their knowledge of herbs. We can tell how important women were in these cultures by looking at the artifacts they left behind. There are a lot of statues or women shown as powerful goddesses and many images of women on other ancient objects.

Everything Changes
Historians think things started to change around 5000 B.C.E. as ancient civilizations began to grow bigger and more powerful. They wanted to take on more land and defeat the tribes around them. That needed brawn as much as brain! Men became seen as the powerful members of society, because they had the muscle-power to take on rival tribes. And women began to be sidelined. Around this time, artifacts showing powerful, male warriors and gods became more common. And fewer and fewer powerful female images were created. (p. 6)

In addition to highlighting the contributions of women from a wide variety of geographic locations, Women Warriors also includes women from a broad range of time periods. Examples range from “Cynane, Super-Slayer of the Ancient Greeks”, from the time of Alexander the Great, to modern day members of the armed forces fighting in Afghanistan and Syria.

The information in Women Warriors is presented in bite-size chunks, easily read by students developing their skills to read for information independently. The simple graphic illustrations and numerous black and white and coloured reproductions of art, and historic and current photos support the text.

There is a short glossary, an index and a list of additional resources “about women who broke the rules and changed the world”. Women Warriors provides a rich wealth of information that is unlikely to duplicate anything you already have on your library shelves.