Battle Tested Beauty Products

Product Testing in the Ukraine War

My wife (Natasha) is a chornabrova of Ukraine, strong, resilient, independent and beautiful. Chornabrova means black-browed and is not a derogatory term at all. Taras Shevchenko, the famous bard of Ukraine wrote about his love for a black-browed woman in his early days. Black-browed woman with raven hair and sparkling green eyes abound here. In fact, in my life and travels, I have never encountered so many green-eyed women and men. It seems to be the dominant gene for eye color here in Ukraine.

A friend (Sasha) in the Ukrainian military and I were recently discussing the genetics of Ukrainian women as we sat sipping Georgian cognac (they don’t serve the Ukrainian one at “our” bar). Sasha was explaining that there had been a study that had proven that the DNA of women in Ukraine is more ancient than that of many of the men. Well, that explains it. Oh, wait, maybe you don’t know the history of the ancient women warriors of Ukraine.

You have heard of the Amazons, I presume? Well, the Greeks feared them mightily and they were not a legend but were real warriors. Amazons were nomadic Scythian warriors from the areas around the Black Sea spreading from what is now Ukraine into Siberia. There were Greek settlements in Crimea and along the Sea of Azov so the ancient Greeks probably encountered the Amazons there and…