Women myths

Of all the odd myths that have arisen in the scientific world, the Caucasian mystery invented quite innocently by Blumenbach is the oddest., A Georgian woman s skull was the handsomest in his collection. Hence it became his model exemplar of human skulls, from which all others might be regarded as deviations and out of this, by some strange intellectual hocus-pocus, grew up the notion that the Caucasian man is the prototypic Adamic man. 

Meade, M. Madame Blavatsky The Woman Behind the Myth. New York Putnam, 1980. 

The use of cocaine by humans dates back to prehistoric times. The Incas of the Andes regions of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru developed the practice of chewing the coca leaf more than 3,000 years ago. Archeological sites in Peru that date back to 1300 B.C. contain mummified bodies with shell vessels for coca and the powdered lime used even today to enhance absorption of cocaine from the leaf (Streatfeild, 2001). Coca was a sacred drug to the Incas. Mama Coca" was viewed as possessing a goddess-like essence. One myth had it that coca had been a beautiful woman who was executed for adultery. From her remains the divine coca plant grew, to be consumed only by royalty in her memory (Petersen, 1977). 

Rutter, V.B. Woman Changing Woman Feminine Psychology Re-Conceived through Myth and Experience, San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1993/1994. 

---