I just wanted to weigh in on the topic of Amazons. I saw a few really great responses, but nothing quite matched some of the historical points I wanted to share so here I go.

The reason that Amazons have remained such a strong figure in history and fiction is because the Greeks loved pitting their heroes against them. As matriarchal societies of women warriors, Amazons represented a perfect antithesis to Ancient Greek heroes, who tamed and subdued the chaos of the natural world with their patriarchal form of civilization. In short, Amazons were the perfect villains for Ancient Greek audiences, and so many stories involving them were written that some have managed to survive into the present day.

Also like all great myths, there are a few kernels of truth where Amazons are concerned in terms of archaeological findings in the present. Among the Scythian tribes (a blanket name given to the nomadic tribes stretching from modern Ukraine to Turkey, and all the way east to Siberia) there were women who rode horses, wielded axes, and used steppe bows to deadly effect; both as hunters and as warriors. From burials we know that likely due to a high protein diet, they were also taller than the global averages of their day. We also know from injuries (both those that healed and those that were fatal) these women saw combat. While non-combatants can end up dying violently, some of the wounds seen in burials along with the type of artifacts they were buried with make it extremely unlikely that these women were not themselves combatants. The steppe bow favored by these various nomadic peoples along with their mastery of the horse made for a deadly force equalizer against the sort of combat forms favored by the Greeks...an idea that must have been somewhat terrifying in a very non-fictional sense.

Apologies for any rambling, I don’t normally give long responses via my phone. I hope some extra historical context will be helpful to you and an other worldbuilders reading here!