Wonder Woman

There were quite a few unexpected discoveries about women this year. In northern Mongolia, the discovery of the skeletons of two 1,500-year-old warrior women is new evidence as to the possible origins of the Chinese Mulan myth, popularized in the West by Disney.

A 4th-century BC dig-site in Russia revealed four women buried with their weapons. They would have been part of the matriarchal Scythian society that are said to have served as the inspiration for such strong female characters as Xena and Wonder Woman.

And going back even further, a 9,000-year-old Peruvian grave contained a woman in her late teens, laid to rest aside her hunting tools—suggesting its time to reconsider assumptions that men were the exclusive hunters in prehistoric society.