Included in the professor's stack of readings, chosen over the next nights from his home, were past academic journals he had kept over the years. He had been privileged to know, several decades before, a few of the UC Berkeley archaeologists who had done seminal work in Eurasia on the nomadic horse tribes. Though it was not his expertise or interest previously as a field, the professor now turned to these writings, along with other selected publications from his vast personal library, combing historical details for relevant information. These particular Cal colleagues, through their seminal work excavating burial kurgans left by the horse cultures on the Eurasian steppes, had established critical facts for scholars to ponder on the nature of nomadic women living and dying in the region long before and about the time Greece's Classical Period was at its peak.

Though it had been stressed in these studies that more work needed to be done on the ancient inhabitants from this little-understood region of the world—and about a people who had left no written records of their social system or achievements, the professor re-read the original publications with new insight. He hoped to revisit certain theories hinting at a physical connection to the Amazon legends, stretching back, according to Greek historians, much further in time than their own Classical Period.

On the broad plains extending largely from the Black Sea coastal regions up into the frozen Ukraine, the skeletons of female warriors had been found remarkably buried with their horses and weapons. This UC Berkeley work presented the compelling hypothesis that there were actual inter-cultural encounters with such formidable women warriors fighting sometimes alongside their men and sometimes separately. The writings of Plato, Herodotus and other Greeks suggested, according to ancillary studies of inscriptions, that such a cultural phenomenon of females, adept in the art of war did, in fact, exist in the dark, half-forgotten time of the Greek heroes. This was during the Mycenaean Age of 1600 -1100 BCE.

The legends of these isolated women, roaming the hinterlands as enemies of the ancient Greeks and seemingly all others who may have confronted them, became an absolute obsession of artists on the Attic peninsula of Greece some eight-hundred years later. This flowering of expression had as a popular motif the battles between Greek soldiers and Amazon warriors found on many of the decorative arts throughout the Greek mainland and some islands. Such spectacular artwork can be seen in the peak of the Greek Classical Period, a two-hundred year epoch generally accepted to be from around 500 – 300 BCE.

Later, in the European Middle Ages, and as a result of the Crusades which transferred peoples and ideas from both Western and Eastern points across Europe, there was a resurgence of these artistic renderings of women warriors and their related legends. To many, the idea of a nation of all women defending themselves and their territory was a phantasmagorical idea. It was thought to be merely a romantic notion that there could have been, somewhere in the unexplored world, a race of warlike women, reported to be living collectively and practicing total isolation from men.

Intriguing and even more entertaining was the idea that these women reportedly used men chiefly for reproductive purposes—killing or returning their male offspring to the nomadic peoples from where they were sired, usually during an orgiastic summer. The notion was that the Amazon women kept the young girls produced to foster and preserve their own culture as future, valiant fighters. This made for irresistible lore down through the centuries—particularly to the predominantly male explorers and adventurers who heard these tales en route to new lands, and no doubt, while isolated, vulnerable to attack, and perennially sequestered from their own women.

As the Renaissance Period developed in Europe around 1450 CE, and commercial interests promoted an age of further discovery and advanced trade with the edges of the unknown world, these Amazonian stories first reached the South and Central American jungles—presumably by sailors who had heard them from their long-past origins in the Mediterranean.

This was the case in the naming of the greatest river to be found in the New World—the Amazon. When it was first put on to the maps in the year 1500 CE by explorer Vincente Yanez Pinzon, it was given the perfectly forgettable name of Rio Santa Maria de la Mar Dulce (St. Mary's River of the Freshwater Sea). Then some forty years later, Francisco de Orellana broke ranks as a renegade soldier on yet another expedition to Peru to search for wealth on the eastern side of the AndesMountains. He and his band of deserters followed the river's tributaries all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, claiming at several points in 1540 that they had been attacked by a fierce tribe of all women warriors—wearing gold ornaments and wielding bows and arrows. The mythical name he gave to these assailants became a much more romantic moniker for the entire river complex, which survives today—the Amazon.

The single-minded Professor Simons, as he reviewed the literature each night in his home, was aware that the plots and characters of such ancient myths were introduced to the New World by a wave of 16th century adventurers. They had come desperate to find and exploit whatever resources could be carried away for fame and profit from these new continents—North and South America. Subsequently, this Amazonian legend's transfer and assimilation into a new mindset continued on to the North American deserts and western continental coastlines, most notably in the case of California's discovery, charting and naming. This is today evidenced by its current name and the physical phenomenon of the Baja peninsula which was in those early days of exploration perceived to be a huge, detached island from the mainland—a geographical paradigm which at least on many early maps, remained so for over one hundred years.

The professor was keenly aware that in 1510 a Spanish writer, popular with the courtly elite, wished to create a sequel to a popular Portuguese romance, already favored by the nobility and the well-educated. He penned this 'tagged-on,' fifth episode of a knightly tale, Las Sergias de Esplandian (The Adventures of Esplandian). Gari Rodriguez de Montalvo, the Castilian author, fueled the fires of imagination for the Amazon legend in the New World with his story of an errant knight returning from the Crusades. In his romance Esplandian's ship is blown off course and wrecked on a distant island (somewhere far outside the Mediterranean). This new land featured exotic, lovely beaches and a beautiful Amazon queen—called Califia, who ruled her island "somewhere on the right of the Indies."

To the new breed of Spanish and Portuguese explorers, this suggested somewhere in the newly discovered (but as yet uncharted) Pacific Ocean. The story had a tremendous impact on the imaginations and expectations of what or who might be encountered during expeditions to the unexplored and literally "new" world.

This 'Queen of the Amazons,' who reigned upon her island of golden beaches was radiant, and according Montalvo's alluring text, there was not one of her female fellow Amazons lovelier than she. Moreover, this race of dark-skinned and noble women warriors was fierce in battle and "knew of no other metal than gold." The romance by Montalvo went on to explain that protecting Califia and her sisters on the exceptional shores of her realm were fearsome griffin-like creatures, lethal to any man who landed on the island's shores.

This fictional portrayal of the Amazon motif, published and read widely during Spain's Golden Age of Discovery (c.1492 – 1650 CE) only ratcheted-up the awareness of Amazons in the New World—their allurement, and their man-killing mystique. As the sturdy little ships of the Spanish and Portuguese passed further around the uncharted land masses of the New World during most of the sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth, many of the expeditionary soldiers and sailors knew of Montalvo's story and other tales of exotica circulating about the new lands during their colonization. As further exploration and settlements came to the Americas, which lay fortuitously between the old world and Asia, many legends took hold in these strange new lands.

During this mid-sixteenth century epoch the most notorious of the Spanish conquistadores, Hernan Cortez, was returning to the New World under the appointment of Charles V. He would, as a result of his famed conquering of the Aztecs in 1521, take the coveted position of "King's Viceroy of New Spain"—headquartered in Mexico City. It was a time when new efforts were underway to chart and further explore the west coast of the North American continent. What were desired by the explorers were any precious commodities in addition to silver and gold, which had made the Spanish Crown, and men like Cortes, rich almost generation earlier. The discovery of any new islands along the way or recognition of the route leading to the fabled 'Strait of Anian,' would certainly secure the future riches of any brave mariner who ventured through the rough waters of this terra incognita.

Upon returning from Spain to Mexico in 1530, Cortez, by then a seasoned explorer and still a ruthless military genius, was in addition, a well-read man. It was very possible that he was in possession of Montalvo's popular romance Las Sergias de Esplandian earlier, while in Cuba, Hispaniola or Mexico. It is highly likely he had already read the romance while in Spain before returning to resume explorations and possible new conquests along the West coast.

Cortez encountered through this later period of his career what appeared in 1536 to be an unfathomably large island in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of northern New Spain (Mexico). It was in fact, today's Baja California peninsula. His early navigators working under the orders of the Viceroy, and one of Cortez's own relatives, Francisco de Ullo, gave this eight-hundred mile long land mass the Latinized name, "Califia's Land"—"California," as was Queen Califia's island so named verbatim in Montalvo's fanciful romance:

"There ruled on that island of California, a queen great of body, very beautiful for her race, at a flourishing age, desirous in her thoughts of achieving great things, valiant in strength, cunning in her brave heart, more than any other who had ruled that kingdom before her...Queen Califia."

--Las Sergias de Esplandian (c.1510)

It was an appropriate title for the mysterious "island" they had discovered, not knowing until later incursions up its east and west coastlines that it was actually only a peninsula. The landmass was discovered finally to be attached to the greater continent which stretched imperceptibly further northwestward as North America. The name "California" was either penned onto the inaccurate maps of the day in an earnest belief that the land mass was actually an island, or perhaps knowingly in jest, suggesting some ironic commentary to Califia's remarkable paradise. For it was discovered then, and is known today, that the true terrain of Baja California is quite barren and inhospitable—actually lacking much of the magic Montalvo ascribed to his mythical island in the now famous literary work. Nevertheless, the rest of the world has called this intriguing edge of the continent "California" ever since.

As with each successive night returning home, the professor's obsessive reading and pondering would put him into a state of deep and careful thought. For hours he would sit in his lonely domain, finally nodding-off at his desk, or retiring clumsily to recline in his book-strewn bedroom. There he would contemplate the writings of Montalvo and what connection the ancient Amazons, if in fact they existed, had to the perplexing discovery he was charged to make sense of.

Finally, only the memories of his innocent Irene, dancing in the sunlight on that warm summer's day, could give him any relief from the agonizing quest which seemed now to consume him. The mystery of the tholos and its elusive significance to the coast of California was turning out to be his greatest historical challenge. And in connection to this was the perplexing activities of those unseen females—working in concert somewhere in the shadows, ever presenting to be a pernicious foe.

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