In Classical Greek mythology, Amazon was believed to be a nation of only women ruled entirely by the female gender that utilized only highly trained women warriors in battle. 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 Eastern Europe. Other specialized historians placed them in Asia Minor or Libya, both of which are located just north of Egypt.

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

Another version of this story states that when the Amazon’s go to war they do not kill all the men they encounter. Some are taken as slaves, and once or twice a year the women copulate with their slaves for the purpose of procreation so as to insure the continuation of the tribe, otherwise the story ends about the same. 

The ancient Greeks sooo believed in the existence of these vicious women that they were accepted throughout the land; in fact they were eventually introduced into national poetry and art. The Amazon women’s occupation was almost always depicted as being clad with a multitude of weapons, including the bow, spear, axe, a half shield (nearly in the shape of a crescent), and in early art, a helmet was often worn by the typical warrior. They were generally 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, could be determined by the fact that she wore a single earring during battle.

Women-warriors continued to be discussed by authors (not only of Greek descent) 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 the Amazon Nation was 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. That’s right,  Amazon! 

Such a confrontation by the Spaniards was clearly proof positive that this was the true location of the legendary Amazon Nation, so often described by the ancient Greeks.

Add to the 1542 incident, as described above, that similar cases were reported as coming into play during the exploits of the well-known Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus of the 1492 era.   

Sooo, fabled women warriors of Amazon must have, in the very least, seemed realistic to the typical European! Little wonder when confrontations with Amazon women warriors of like kind were described nearly 150 years later by Sir Walter Raleigh, it came as little surprise.