Word: orellana
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana returned from his exploration of the Amazon River four centuries ago, he told of a startling jungle encounter with a race of heroic women warriors. Like the Amazons of Greek mythology, whose name was subsequently given to the great waterway, the jungle women were fierce hunters and fighters. They mated with males captured from neighboring tribes, disposed of their male babies and reared their female offspring in their own martial image. Lacking any other evidence, most experts have long thought that Orellana's tales were fanciful. Now, as a result...
...Anthropologist Altair Sales of the Catholic University of Goiás. After exploring the caverns and questioning the Indians about them, Sales emerged from the jungle with an astonishing conclusion: the caves, he says, were inhabited long ago by warlike women remarkably similar to those described by Francisco de Orellana...
...recurring theme: a triangle marked by a deep cut running from one apex to the center. To Sales, the triangle is obviously a symbol for the female. The same symbol, he recalls, had been observed on the jewelry of the Amazons by Father Caspar de Carvajal, a chronicler of Orellana's expedition. At least one of the cave triangles has a smaller triangle carved inside it; Sales speculates that it might represent pregnancy. Another triangle, adorned with two stripes, might have symbolized a tribal leader. Still others are positioned side by side, suggesting lesbianism. The caves are also decorated...