Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Amazons were female warriors and hunters in Greek mythology, known for their physical agility, strength, archery, riding skills, and the arts of combat. Their society was closed to men, and they raised only their daughters while returning their sons to the fathers. They were led by a queen and appear in the Labours of Heracles, the Argonautica, and Homer's Iliad.
Ancient authors most often placed the Amazon kingdom in Pontus, in northern Anatolia on the southern shores of the Black Sea. Their queen resided at the capital Themiscyra, on the banks of the Thermodon river, known today as the Terme. Other accounts located them in Asia Minor provinces such as Lycia and Caria or in the steppes around the Black Sea.
Penthesilea was an Amazon queen of Thracian birth who came to fight for Troy after the death of Hector. Her warriors initially pressured the Greeks until Achilles turned the tide, and she died facing him in single combat. She had earlier killed her sister Hippolyte in a hunting accident.
Heracles set out to obtain the magic belt of the Amazon queen Hippolyte as one of his Labours. A misunderstanding led to a fight in which he killed the queen and several others, after which the Amazons handed over the belt. In another version he spares the queen and exchanges her kidnapped sister Melanippe for it.
Many classical scholars consider the Amazons entirely fictional, while archaeology has shown that women warriors did exist on the Eurasian steppe. On the lower Don and lower Volga about 20 percent of warrior graves held women dressed for battle, and armed women made up as much as 25 percent of Sarmatian military burials. Whether these peoples inspired the Greek Amazons remains unproven.
The origin of the word Amazon is uncertain. Proposed roots include an Iranian ethnonym meaning warriors, a Greek phrase meaning manless or without husbands, and an Iranian source meaning virility-killing. The Greeks folk-etymologized it from a word meaning breastless, a story author Adrienne Mayor argues produced the myth rather than recording a real custom.
Named Amazon queens include Otrera, the first queen and daughter of Ares; Hippolyta and her sister Antiope; Penthesilea; Myrina, who led an expedition into Libya; Lampedo and Marpesia; and Thalestris, the last known queen said to have met Alexander the Great in 330 BCE.