There's a great Wikipedia entry on historical amazons - it makes for a good read. From the article:
Amazons were said to have lived in Pontus, which is part of modern day Turkey near the shore of the Euxine Sea, where they formed an independent kingdom under the government of a queen, often named Hippolyta ("she lets her horses loose"). They were supposed to have founded many towns, amongst them Smyrna, Ephesus, Sinope, Paphos. According to the dramatist Aeschylus, in the distant past they had lived in Scythia, at the Palus Maeotis ("Lake Maeotis", the Sea of Azov), but later moved to Themiscyra on the River Thermodon. Herodotus, who called them Androktones ("killers of men"), also connects Amazons with Scythia, as ancestors of the Sauromatians.
Seriously, that reminds me that I had always intended to write about that kind of thing on my blog. Too bad I hardly write about anything there anymore (even with the contests I made it to this summer).
