Artefact of the Week: Poporos, Saving the World Since the First Millenium AD.

Poporo from the Gold Musem in Bogotá, Colombia

The artefacts of the week before (the Jamaican historic pipe and the Cuban Ídolo del Tabaco) were both connected to a certain drug. One was obviously linked to “sexuality” while the other is a symbol of power. This artefact of the week combines all these aspects and then some into one object.

This Colombian poporo of the archaeological culture we know as Quimbaya was probably made somewhere in the 4^th to 7^th century AD. It looks like it is made of gold, but it is actually tumbaga or guanín, which is an alloy of 80% gold and 19% copper with minor inclusions of silver. It is therefore yellower than most pure gold, much harder and has a distinct odour. Contrary to what may be expected, among indigenous peoples objects made from this alloy were far more appreciated than those made of pure gold . Before European contact the indigenous peoples of Colombia were widely renowned craft masters of tumbaga and pure gold objects and their beautiful creations can be found far from their Colombian homelands.

Aside from the fact that the material from which this particular object was made was highly valued, the poporo would have been an important personal artefact that was probably used for the ingestion of burned coca leaves and lime. We know this because using poporos in this way is a still surviving, longstanding tradition among Colombian indigenous peoples, especially those living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Part of the traditional dress of the men of these peoples consists of a gourd and a stick — probably organic poporos were used in the past as well, but they were not preserved, leaving only a few durable, gold examples. The gourd is filled with a mixture of burned coca leaves and lime which is scooped out of the gourd with the stick. Ingesting this mixture has a slight narcotic effect  — although in no way comparable to the effects of using the party-drug cocaine, which also has coca leaves as raw material. A man will use his gourd multiple times per day in this way.

Taken from Reichel-Dolmatoff 1990

From ethnographic fieldwork, among for example the Kogui of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, we know that a poporo is given to a boy at his passage into adulthood and that he will not be willingly separated from his poporo for the rest of his life. The stick will be swiped clean after each use, so, over time, lime accretes on the top of the gourd. Therefore the poporo of an old man will have a thick crust of lime as can be seen in the picture below. So, it is actually possible to estimate the age of a certain person by looking at his poporo. I think that the only object that comes close to having a comparable close bond with its owner in our society is the wedding ring, although even these are becoming more and more easily disposable.

Still, a poporo is not only important for the personal identities of these people. It is also a vital tool for safeguarding the future of all of creation. First of all the act of dipping the stick into the gourd is seen as analagous to the act of procreation (you don’t need Freudian psychology to recognize the suggestive nature of this act) and it is actually believed that the gourd and stick are a micro-model of the layout of the cosmos.

Taken from Reichel-Dolmatoff 1990

Additionally, in the belief of the resident indigenous peoples the Sierra Nevada is literally the heart of the universe and the indigenous priests, called mamás among the Kogui, are its caretakers — more about this in this TED presentation by anthropologist Wade Davis (at 10 minutes 30 seconds). So, if anything goes wrong with the Sierra Nevada, every living thing everywhere will suffer. Nowadays the mamás guard the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta by raising global public awareness on the importance of the Sierra Nevada and similar natural resources. Aside from this they actively contribute to the well-being of the cosmos by carefully manipulating ‘time cycles’ that act as the gears in the mechanism of life. In order to do this the mama needs to become 'master of time', which, among other things, is achieved by ingesting the mixture of coca and lime inside the poporo. Experienced mamás claim they can actually phase out of time and while being phased out can see and manipulate the time cycles that makes the cosmos run.

It is not known for sure if these ideas were present among indigenous cultures of the first millennium AD, but the fact that poporos were made of expensive and durable materials such as tumbaga suggests that it was already an important artefact at that time. Additionally we know that trying to understand or have a measure of control over cyclical processes of time has great antiquity in many places in the Caribbean basin and that those persons who were adept at these sorts of things often held important political and religious offices.  It is not unlikely that the poporro has already been used to save the world from harm since before the birth of a certain other saviour of humanity.

Angus's Artefacts of Week 3 2011

The famous Atabeyra as photographed by Joost Morsink.

In the two posts before this, I presented two artefacts that are believed to be representations of some form of Caribbean Mother Goddess. There are those who wish to go further than that by stating depictions like these are representations of “Atabeyra.” Atabeyra is one of the several names of a deity-like being that is mentioned as the mother of the creator spirit in the accounts of Fray Ramon Pané. Depicted here is one of the central figures of the famous petroglyphs (carvings in stone) at the ball court at Caguana, Puerto Rico that was identified as Atabeyra. Since then the petroglyph and Atabeyra have gained a prominent status in Puerto Rico as a symbol of national pride, especially for those Puerto Ricans who are in favour of Puerto Rican cultural and political independence from the United States.

Taken from Mason's 1936 book on the Archaeology of the Santa Marta.

Recently, Puerto Rican archaeologists Reniel Rodríguez Ramos has pointed out the similarities between elements of Greater Antillean representations of “Atabeyra” and Pre-Colonial Colombian depictions of a figure that is perhaps some kind of sun deity, such as can be seen in this turtle bone plaque. It does seem that many elements — like posture, frogs (the figures have frog-legs and the plaque is shaped like a frog with its two huge eyes at the top) and birds being depicted (birds are easily visible on the plaque and Rodríguez Ramos has suggested that the earspools and hands of the Puerto Rican Atabeyra are shaped like two big-beaked birds) — of the two figures are the same, which leaves us with some interesting questions. Why is there such a similarity between two cultures that were geographically separated by a huge stretch of water? Were there perhaps regular contacts between the Greater Antilles and the South American mainland? This would be no mean feat seeing that sailing didn’t exist yet in Pre-Columbian times; all transport between islands had to be done by canoe.

Photo courtesy of Arie Boomert.

On the other hand it also leaves us with some interesting problems on what constitutes evidence for cultural contact in situations in which we have no written sources. Traditionally, archaeologists have always stressed “style” as one of the most important indicators of cultural contact, but there seems to be no correspondence in styles between the two regions. Still, many feel that in this case the similarities in form and symbolism between the two representations are too great to be explained as a simple factor of chance. We should not forget, however, that the frog has been an important symbol in many different places and times in the Caribbean. For example it is clear from the archaeological record that the frog is one of the most important symbols of migrant groups that came from the Mainland into the Antilles some centuries before the birth of Christ. Perhaps this means that the frog and its symbolism is just a Caribbean-wide phenomenon and that there were no contacts between the Greater Antilles and Colombia? On the other hand, in the absence of “memory banks” such as books, it is extremely rare for symbols and traditions to remain the same for more than thousand years.

To put it short, we do not know yet how exactly the figure that we recognize as “Atabeyra” in the Greater Antilles is connected through the different times, places and cultures of the Caribbean or what this connection means. Any ideas?