From: João Simões Lopes Filho
Message: 4153
Date: 2000-10-05
----- Original Message -----
From: John Croft <jdcroft@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 10:58 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: AMAZONS: legend or history?
> Joao wrote
> > But how the Primitive Greeks could know people from Central Europe
> or
> > Sarmatia. I think the later geographical knowledge was been mixed
> with a
> > pre-extant legend. Remember that in Modern Age Amazons were
> transferred to
> > South America, as Cyclopes and other mythical creatures. I think
> that an
> > older legend about "women from Sea" was mixed with the discovery of
> true
> > tribes with female warriors.
> > Coincidentally or not, the Brazilian Amerinds from Amazonia have
> many
> > interesting legends about warrior women.
>
> I think that many cultures that are heavily patriarchal in attitudes
> (as were the classical Greeks) justify their attitudes to the
> supression of women through a myth about the far past where women
> ruled the men. I certainly found such stories widespread in the
> Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea when I was there.
>
> It is interesting that the Amazon story spread from Athens, not from
> Sparta. Laocedamian women preserved a great deal of autonomy (which
> scandalised the Athenians, who kept women much more subservient to
> the
> interests of men). It is also interesting that the Amazonian mythos
> is associated with classical Greece, from an area which in Mycenaean
> and pre-Mycenaean times seems to have (like the Western Anatolian
> area) been strongly Matrifocal. Jacquetta Hawkes in particular
> demonstrates how this "change" from a gender partnership to a male
> dominated patriarchy occurred in Archaic times (from 900-700 BCE).
> For instance, the women play a huge role in the genealogies of the
> Heroic period, but in the post Heroic period only male ancestor names
> were preserved.
>
> The Amazonian mythos dates exactly from the time of the Hesiodic
> theogony, the period in which Greek horizons were widening again,
> post
> Homeric, as a result of the recovery that occurred in the Eastern
> Mediterranean in the 8th century. By then Ionic, Dorian and Aeolian
> settlement had already occurred on the coast of Asia Minor and Sea
> routes were well open. Late Geometric and early Attic ware is found
> throughout the Euxine Basin, and Athens was already specialising in
> the export of Olive Oil and the import of grain from the Scythians to
> support its burgeoning population.
>
> To a maritime civilisation, hemmed in by mountains and turned to face
> the sea, it is hardly surprising that a culture in Scythia in which
> there were mounted women warriors would have attracted the Athenian's
> attention. (The fact that there were also mounted male warriors
> alongside them did not strike the Greeks as odd and so was not
> reported).
>
> Joao, your pointing to the earlier Maritime based "Amazonians" see my
> post concerning Hittites. Queen Padukhepa is reputed to have
> organised the Hittite fleet's attack on Cyprus. From Minoan times
> women from Crete served as sailors on the vessels from Keftiu (as
> Egyptian wall paintings show). The Western Anatolian region had a
> long tradition of male and female equality. Queen Artemisia (the
> wife
> of Maulos of Harlicarnassus - who built for her husband the
> Maulosseum
> - one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world), commanded the Carian
> navy at the Battle of Salamis. Xerses who watched her bravery, and
> her fighting prowess when compared to the failure of his own navy,
> commented (according to Herodotus), "the women fight like men and the
> men fight like women!".
>
> To the Athenians (of whom the sailors were all men) this again led to
> confusion about sexual equality being read as "women dominating".
>
> Hope this helps
>
> Regards
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>