A tembetá' (Guaraní language: tembé: lip, Ita: stone.) or Barbote (Argentina) is a metal or stone rod, placed in lower lip piercings by the members of some American Indian tribes in South America. It has been used since the Neolithic period by different human groups as a way of body modification, spiritual protection, and indication of sexual maturity.
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Tembetas, according to the first studies of Fernandez, originated in Planalto, Brazil. Their use expanded as far south as El Quisco, Chile, and they were adopted by indigenous groups such as the Guarani, Tupi, and Chiriguano peoples.[1]
The tembetá played a part in initiation feasts. They signified the entry of young men into their adult life. After these ceremonies, the men could marry and acquire the responsibilities of an adult male.
The males had to place the tembetá, which was an adornment in the low part of the low lip. They owed a hole with a small stick so that they could place the tembetá. Several men and candidates were meeting and were taking great Chicha of maize (term used in some regions of Latin America for several varieties of fermented beverages, particularly those derived from maize). It was serving the young men the pain to lull and to support them. A specialist was the manager of perforating with a thick needle of wood the low part of the lip and was placing the tembetá that was used during all his life.
It was said while this ceremony lasted to ask that the tembetá was protecting its owner from death. Indeed it was a very important amulet for them more than an adornment. To this end, it was placed near the mouth, a potential entry of damaging forces.
Molle culture is typified by the wearing of this singular adornment in the low lip. It was made of stone, preferably of beautiful colors, and it consists of a thin curved plate, which was molded to the gums and of whose center was standing out a button, cylindrical or sharp-pointed that penetrates the lip 5 to 7 cm.
The tembetá is a cultural feature of very wide distribution. It has been used by peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas and often it had, apart from it decorative value, a social meaning. Pipes of stone were occupying also in the shape of letter "T" reversed that consists of two arms, some of them perforated and in communication with a central stove; the majority consist of talcous stone. The aborigens were using her commonly in your rites to smoke some vegetable with hallucinogenic properties.
The Tembetá, called "labrete",[2] there characterizes all the tribes Guarani is. The former Guarani tembetá was, according to the archaeological findings, a fact of quartz in the shape of a "T", 10 cm of length, always an emblem of an adult man in all the ceremonial occasions. The use of work you of quartz it seems to be "a property" of them shaman. It is in narrow correlation with ita-verá (brilliant stone) of the mythical one Tupá Overasú, of the great one Tupá of the Storm.
Used in several pre-Columbian cultures. The principal was the Molle culture, which brought from the Planalto of Brazil. The cultures derived from El Molle they were Diaguita, Llolleo and Simpleton.
In the Llolleo Culture it importance was cardinal whereas in the Bato, on the other hand, the tembetá is, in agreement to the available evidences, the personal "adornment" of major relevancy, not representing Llolleo's spiritual connotations.
The Tembetá means protection against the negative action of the "owners of the nature"; it is also the ritual adornment of the "souls that travel towards the land of beyond" All the culturally neolithic tribes and racially amazónides always they were demonstrating a deep scorn for the peoples "that they were not using Tembeta".