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"Amazonia" designates the Amazonian world, to be more precise a body of peoples distinguished by a specific culture which anthropologists also call "lowland societies" as opposed to those of the Andine world. Some of the peoples whose objects are shown here live outside the Amazon hydrographic basin. Others do not - or no longer - live in the humid tropical Amazonian forest but in savannah or dry forest ecosystems.
The headdress or raheto can be explained by the myth of the arrival of light among the Karajá. Its row of black feathers represents the Great Star, that of white feathers the Moon and the outer feathers, the Sun. The myth tells how Mareiko, the wife of Kanaxiwe, was caught unawares by darkness and injured herself. When she complained to her husband that he did not give sufficient light to the Karajá, he fled into the forest ashamed and killed himself. But when the vulture Iolò alighted on his body, Kanaxiwe – who was not really dead - caught it and ordered it to give him light. Iolò brought him his diadems, the Great Star and the Moon, but Kanaxiwe found their light too dim. So the vulture brought him his diadem the Sun and Kanaxiwe was satisfied.
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