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Anthropology
Gods on Gourds
Depiction changes anthropologists' understanding of the past.
Anthropologists around the world are excited by the discovery of a 4,000 year-old gourd segment depicting the image of the staff god, the main deity worshipped in South America before the Europeans arrived. This small piece of gourd is important because it means that organized religion existed 1,000 years earlier than scientists originally thought.
Helaine Silverman, associate professor of anthropology, also thinks the discovery is significant because since all other representations of the staff god have been found on temple walls, the appearance of one on a common gourd suggests that religion existed in a personalized form.
October 2003
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