Women's Lib, Amazon Style

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 of a discovery deep in the wilds of Brazil, the old Amazon legend has been revived once again.

The new evidence of an Amazon civilization was found last spring by Jesco von Puttkamer, a German ethnologist and photographer who was studying and photographing the Galeras Indians, a primitive people who live in the largely unexplored rain forests of Brazil's Rondonia territory. After Von Puttkamer had befriended the tribesmen and learned their language, they led him to three secret caves decorated with mysterious markings. Recognizing the possible significance of the site, Von Puttkamer decided to call in expert help: Anthropologist Altair Sales of the Catholic University of Goias. 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.

Among the strange markings on the cave walls, Sales discovered a 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 with pictures of masks that Sales thinks were worn by Amazons during their manhunting raids on nearby villages. To produce a suitable hypnotic effect during mating rites, the Amazons apparently played flutes, which are also carved on the cave walls. To this day, Sales reports, local Indian men forbid their women to play flutes, lest they take to reviving Amazonian ways.

In one of the caves, Sales found a rock with a large basin-like hole gouged out of it; there were also grooves running into the basin. That brought to mind one old account of the Amazons drinking the blood of their slaughtered male offspring; Sales believes the basin was designed to catch blood from the infants slaughtered on the stone.

Copulatorium. Some five miles from the caves, Sales discovered still more evidence of the Amazon culture: a huge stone with stairs carved into its side. The top of the rock was artificially smoothed and was probably used as a platform; on it are side-by-side carvings of a triangle and phallus, the only male symbol found in the area. Sales concludes that the stone was the Amazons' copulatorium, or ritual mating site.

Sales is convinced by the artifacts that the people who produced them were indeed Amazons. Moreover, he says, there may have once been many feminist tribes roaming all through the Brazilian jungles. Until he has further proof of his contention, however, he intends to keep secret the precise lo cation of the caves and the copulatorium. That will prevent archaeological scavengers from making off with the surviving handiwork of what may have been some of the world's earliest and most fanatic women liberationists.

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