Women Warriors of Amazon

... Not Your Typical Warrior ...

Amazon was believed to be a nation that used all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity or you could just say in the olden days. Herodotus, who was an ancient Greek historian and is often called “the father of history”, said they were from a region bordering the modern country of Ukraine located in Central and Eastern Europe. Other specialized historians place them in Asia Minor, or perhaps Libya, both of which are located just north of Egypt.

In most versions of the myth, men were not permitted to have sexual encounters or even reside within Amazon country; however, at least once each year, in order to prevent their race from dying out, the warrior-women visited a neighboring tribe of males who were forced to performed the necessary act to impregnate the women that were no doubt very similar in appearance and stature as the female-warrior depicted above. The resulting male children, were killed, sent back to their fathers or tossed into the wilderness to fend for themselves. The females were kept and brought up by their mothers, and trained in typical agricultural pursuits, hunting, and most importantly, the art of war.   

Another version of this story states that when the Amazons went to war they would not kill all the men they encountered. Some they would take as slaves, and once or twice a year they would have sex with their slaves for the sole purpose of procreation so as to insure the continuation of their peoples, otherwise the story ends just the same.

The ancient Greeks so believed in the existence of these vicious women that once accepted throughout the land, they were introduced into national poetry and art. The Amazon women’s occupation was almost always depicted as being that of a hunter and warrior; their weapons of choice included the bow, spear, axe, a half shield (nearly in the shape of a crescent), and in early art a helmet was worn by the typical warrior. They were most often depicted on horseback but every now and then they were on foot. The sure way to recognize an Amazon woman, if in fact there was doubt, can easily be determined, in vase paintings at least, by the fact that they are wearing only one earring.

Women-warriors continued to be discussed by authors (and not just Greek’s) during the European Renaissance (14^th to 17^th century) and with the Age of Exploration (early 15^th to early 17^th century) or the age of Discovery as some historians call the period; but they were located in ever more remote areas of the world, for example in 1542, when Francisco de Orellana (a Spanish explorer and conquistador) reached the greatest river in all of South America he named it after a tribe of warlike women he claimed to have encountered and fought there: Amazon.

Such a confrontation by the Spaniards was clearly proof positive that this was the true location of the legendary Amazons so often described by the ancient Greeks. Add to that historic incident the fact that similar and earlier events had come into play during the exploits of the well known Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus. There were also events of like kind described nearly 150 years later by Sir Walter Raleigh, who was the Englishman best noted for popularizing tobacco in England as well as being the sponsor of the Roanoke Colony that has for more than 400 years been quite the mystery.

Sources ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons                                              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Island                                                    http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-amazons-33--image14393405   http://tgsfree4allinfo.blogspot.com/2011/12/lost-colony-of-roanoke-island.html