Is there a real reason why ancient armies didn’t have female soldiers, or was it just sexism?
古代军队没有女兵的真正原因是什么，还是性别歧视？
I cannot decide if this question is serious or not. I mean it‘s obvious, isn’t it?
我不能决定这个问题是否严重。我是说这很明显，不是吗？
Here are a few indisputable facts
以下是一些不争的事实
- Men on average are taller than women
- 男人平均比女人高
- Men on average are stronger than women, having more muscle mass and the ability to more easily gain muscle mass
- 平均来说，男人比女人强壮，拥有更多的肌肉和更容易获得肌肉的能力
- Men are wider than woman- having shoulders that are broader
- 男人比女人宽——肩膀比女人宽
- Men do not menstruate or get pregnant
- 男人不月经也不怀孕
Ancient warfare is brutal. Any human can pull a trigger and a bullet fired by a female is as deadly as one fired by a male.
古代的战争是残酷的。任何人都能扣动扳机，女性射出的子弹和男性射出的子弹一样致命。
In ancient warfare, is was all swords, shields, spears, and armor. It was extremely physical. You would need to swing heavy chunks of metal in desperate fights for your life while wearing tons of metal armor.
在古代战争中，is是所有的剑、盾、矛和盔甲。这是非常实际的。你将需要挥舞沉重的金属块在绝望的战斗中为你的生命，而穿着金属盔甲吨。
It was brutal, violent, aggressive, and long. Many battles would last days.
这是残酷的，暴力的，侵略性的，长期的。许多战斗将持续数天。
A female facing a male would be a quick fight. This always is a quick fight. That’s why women are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence- men can physically overpower them at all.
一只雌性面对一只雄性会是一场快速的战斗。这总是一场速战速决。这就是为什么女性绝大多数是性侵犯和家庭暴力的受害者——男性在身体上完全可以战胜她们。
An army of women facing an army of men would be a very quick and very violent battle.
一个女人的军队面对一个男人的军队将是一个非常迅速和非常暴力的战斗。
Let’s look at a historical example.
让我们看一个历史例子。
Queen Boudica of the Iceni tribe revolted against the Roman Empire in 61 AD. She mobilized the entire tribal population of the region against the Romans and many ancient sources say that the women outnumbered the men in her army.
公元61年，伊塞尼部落的布迪卡王后起义反抗罗马帝国。她动员了该地区的所有部落居民反抗罗马人，许多古代消息来源说，在她的军队中，妇女人数超过男子。
Boudica’s army was said to number 230,000 though 70,000 seems more realistic. She would face down 2 Roman legions, numbering 10,000 in total·
布迪卡的军队说有23万人，但7万人似乎更现实。她将面对2个罗马军团，总共10000人。
Now 7 to 1 odds are extremely lopsided. In addition, most of the Iceni forces had captured Roman weapons and armor. You would expect this battle to be a slaughter right?
现在7比1的几率是极不平衡的。此外，大多数冰岛军队还缴获了罗马的武器和盔甲。你会认为这场战斗是一场屠杀，对吧？
Well, it was a slaughter- it was just the Romans that did the slaughtering. Estimates of Boudica’s casualties vary from 80,000 to 20,000 but her army was destroyed and a huge percentage was just flat out slaughtered. The Romans meanwhile lost only a few hundred men.
好吧，那是一场屠杀——只是罗马人在屠杀。据估计，布迪卡的伤亡人数从8万到2万不等，但她的军队被摧毁了，很大一部分人被彻底屠杀。与此同时，罗马人只损失了几百人。
Now many have asked “why not add women to make your army larger” and on the surface, this seems logical.
现在很多人问“为什么不增加女性来扩大你的军队”，表面上看，这似乎是合乎逻辑的。
But if you think about it- it never makes sense to do this.
但如果你仔细想想，这样做是没有意义的。
A big factor in warfare is what percentage of your population can be mobilized to fight. You need people to do the farming, to run the government, and to run the society. You cannot mobilize your whole population because at the very least you need farmers and blacksmiths.
战争中的一个重要因素是你的人口中有多大比例可以被动员起来作战。你需要人来耕种，管理政府，管理社会。你不能动员你的全部人口，因为至少你需要农民和铁匠。
Not to mention the old and young who need tending too and everything else.
更不用说那些需要照顾的老人和年轻人了。
In war, you can only mobilize a small percentage of the population and that is just the reality.
在战争中，你只能动员一小部分人，这就是现实。
The Romans were perhaps the best organized and most advanced civilization until the modern era. Even then they could only ever mobilize about 500,000 men out of a population of 50+ million.
在现代之前，罗马人也许是组织得最好、最先进的文明。即便如此，他们也只能从5000多万人口中动员大约50万人。
Even in the modern era (like in WW2) with women working to produce military hardware (like in the US) you still could only mobilize maybe 10%-20% of your total population.
即使在现代（如二战）妇女从事军事装备的生产（如美国），你仍然只能调动总人口的10%-20%。
So if you are the Romans and you are only going to mobilize maybe 1% of the population, why would you mobilize the weakest and smallest members of your civilization? You would do what every nation does- and select the largest and strongest men to serve in the army.
所以，如果你是罗马人，你只打算动员大概1%的人口，为什么你要动员你文明中最弱和最小的成员？你们要做每个国家都做的事——挑选最大最强壮的人参军。
Then we get to other issues- biology
然后我们讨论其他问题-生物学
Women have periods and women get pregnant. Say you have an army of 50,000. These people live together, eat together, and fight together. Imagine now half are men and half are women- what do you think happens? That’s right, lots of sex.
女人有月经，女人怀孕。假设你有一支50000人的军队。这些人一起生活，一起吃饭，一起战斗。想象一下现在一半是男人一半是女人-你觉得会发生什么？是的，很多性。
Lots of sex means lots of babies. Women who are pregnant cannot do much active- they certainly cannot fight in battle. It’s not that this lasts a few days or hours, it lasts for months.
大量的性意味着大量的婴儿。怀孕的妇女不能做太多的运动，她们当然不能参加战斗。这不是持续几天或几个小时，而是持续几个月。
Then you have periods. Periods can last about 5 days a month meaning for 60 days of the year women are struggling with health issues like cramps, irritability, and there are sanitary issues.
那你就有月经了。月经一个月大约持续5天，这意味着女性一年中有60天都在为痉挛、易怒和卫生问题等健康问题而挣扎。
Do periods make women unfunctional? Not at all. It’s actually a really minor thing. But in warfare, even a minor thing can have serious consequences. If this factor slows or weakens your army even 1% why would you bother with it?
经期会让女人失去功能吗？一点也不。这其实是一件很小的事情。但在战争中，哪怕是一件小事也会造成严重后果。如果这个因素减缓或削弱了你的军队，哪怕只有1%，你为什么还要费心呢？
This all compounds when you again realize you don‘t need women. It’s unnecessary. Since you can only mobilize a small part of your population you have more than enough men so why add women? Why add people that are shorter and weaker and who get pregnant and have persistent constant health issues (even though they are minor).
当你再次意识到你不需要女人时，这一切就变得复杂了。没必要。既然你只能调动一小部分人口，你就有足够多的男人，那为什么还要增加女人呢？为什么要加上那些身材矮小、体弱多病、怀孕后有持续性健康问题的人（即使他们很小）。
You mean aside from the fact that on average women are weaker than men, and this difference would matter a lot more before the invention of gunpowder weaponry? It’s because women are the limiting factor on how fast you can replenish your population.
你的意思是除了平均来说女人比男人弱这一事实之外，在火药武器发明之前，这种差异会更重要吗？这是因为女性是你补充人口速度的限制因素。
If your tribe is reduced to 10 people, and one of them is a man, then your can replenish your numbers 9 times faster than if one if them was a woman. It’s simple math.
如果你的部落减少到10个人，其中一个是男人，那么你的补充人数的速度比一个女人快9倍。这是简单的数学。
Every woman lost in warfare is also the loss of any children she might have had. Every man lost can be replaced by another man. Many of these ancient societies practiced polygyny, so a decrease in men wouldn’t effect the rate at which soldiers are replenished.
每一个在战争中丧生的妇女，也都失去了她可能有的孩子。每一个失去的人都可以被另一个人取代。许多古代社会实行一夫多妻制，因此男性的减少不会影响士兵补充的速度。
A samurai’s wife was expected to study the art of war. She would not accompany him into battle, but if her home was attacked she would be able to defend it. Or failing that, kill the children and then herself.
一个武士的妻子被要求学习战争的艺术。她不愿意陪他参战，但如果她的家遭到攻击，她将能够保卫它。否则就杀了孩子然后自杀。
For this reason you don’t see any ancient societies that had significant number of female soldiers. Women might have been taught to fight as a last line of defense, but a significant reason for war was to either defend your own women, or to claim the women of your enemies. Once the battle reaches your women then you’ve already lost.
因此，你看不到任何古代社会有相当数量的女兵。妇女可能被教导战斗是最后一道防线，但战争的一个重要原因是要么保卫自己的妇女，要么夺取敌人的妇女。一旦战斗到达你的女人那你就已经输了。
At the Battle of Vosges Germanic women arrived with children and bare breasts to remind their husbands what exactly it was they were defending.
在沃斯盖斯战役中，日耳曼妇女带着孩子和裸露的乳房来到这里，提醒他们的丈夫他们到底在保卫什么。
Keep in mind, that for most of human history there were fewer than a billion people in the world. Life expectancy was 30, and most of that number was skewered by deaths in early childhood. The question of how to replace dead soldiers was an important one. And it doesn’t take a genius to realize that the first step is to make sure you protect the women to replace those soldiers.
请记住，在人类历史的大部分时间里，世界上只有不到10亿人。预期寿命为30岁，其中大部分是由于儿童早期死亡造成的。如何替换死去的士兵是一个重要的问题。不需要天才就能意识到，第一步是确保你保护妇女来取代那些士兵。
Today women are allowed to serve in the armed forces because we have guns and because life expectancy in the US is 78 years. There will always be another batch of 17 year olds to throw into the meatgrinder. But that wasn’t always the case.
今天，妇女被允许在军队服役，因为我们有枪，因为美国的预期寿命是78岁。总会有另外一批17岁的孩子被扔进绞肉机。但事实并非总是如此。
There are several reasons that men have historically done the fighting, but I would say the main reason is that females in ancient times were valuable to the continuity of a society from a reproductive point.
历史上有几个原因是男人干这种事，但我想说的是，主要原因是古代女性从生殖的角度对社会的延续是有价值的。
神话中的亚马逊河战士与希腊人战斗
For example, let’s say you were an ancient town and you had 300 male warriors and 300 women of childbearing age. Now, if 299 of those men were killed fighting another town, the lone surviving warrior could theoretically produce 300 babies in one year by mating with the 300 women. Now, reverse the situation — if 299 female warriors were killed in the fight and only 1 survived — you’re getting one baby (and a lot of blue balls) or maybe two babies if she has twins. And you’ll probably lose some of your men as they start killing each other trying to be the one who gets to claim her sexual rights and mate with her.
例如，假设你是一个古老的城镇，你有300名男性战士和300名育龄妇女。现在，如果这些男人中有299人在另一个城镇战斗中丧生，理论上，这个幸存下来的孤独战士可以在一年内通过与300名女性交配产下300个婴儿。现在，扭转这种情况-如果299名女战士在战斗中丧生，只有1人幸存-你会得到一个孩子（和许多蓝球），或者如果她有双胞胎，可能会有两个孩子。你可能会失去一些你的男人，因为他们开始互相残杀，试图成为一个谁得到她的性权利，并与她交配。
Also, most women in ancient times would have been pregnant or burdened with caring for their children. With no reliable birth control, many women spent their fertile years pregnant or nursing infants. It‘s hard to jump up and march off to war if you’re pregnant or have a passel of kids and a household to oversee.
而且，在古代，大多数妇女都会怀孕或负担照顾自己的孩子。由于没有可靠的节育措施，许多妇女在怀孕或哺乳婴儿后度过了生育期。如果你怀孕了，或者有一大堆孩子和一个家庭要管理，你很难跳起来去参战。
You also have to take into account that we are a dimorphic species and males are typically larger and significantly stronger than females and far more aggressive. Despite what Hollywood tells you, that matters in hand-to-hand combat. Males have greater muscle mass and substantially more upper body strength. While strength still matters in modern armies to a degree, the smallest female soldier can still pull a trigger. In ancient warfare, you have to account for equipment and armor. Fighting was brutal and up close, so strength, endurance, and agility could mean the difference between life and death. Could a woman be a successful soldier in ancient times? Some, but I think they would be the exception.
你还必须考虑到我们是一个二型物种，雄性通常比雌性更大，更强壮，更具攻击性。不管好莱坞怎么说，这在肉搏战中很重要。男性拥有更大的肌肉质量和更大的上半身力量。虽然在现代军队中，力量在某种程度上仍然很重要，但最小的女兵仍然可以扣动扳机。在古代战争中，你必须考虑装备和盔甲。战斗是残酷和近距离的，所以力量、耐力和敏捷可能意味着生与死的区别。古代一个女人能成为一名成功的士兵吗？有些，但我想他们是例外。
Besides glory, ancient warriors were often fighting to protect their wives and families — I don‘t think it would have done their peace of mind any good worrying about their womenfolk being in harm’s way to possibly be killed, mutilated, or captured and taken away to be raped by the enemy and then enslaved.
除了荣耀之外，古代的武士们经常为了保护他们的妻子和家人而战斗——我认为担心他们的女人受到伤害，可能被杀害、残害，或者被俘虏、带走，被敌人强奸，然后被奴役，这对他们的平和没有任何好处。