Anthropomorphous figure

In this figure we can appreciate the fine craftsmanship of the archaeological ceramics in the Tumaco region, during the Inguapí period. With almond shaped eyes and harmonious proportions, this man was represented standing up, in a transcendent attitude. The lack of arms gives the figure a certain degree of mystery.

In the humid stifling heat of the plains along the Colombian Pacific coastline, he is dressed with a loincloth and has a decorated fabric over his chest and back. In addition to multiple earrings, he has a nose ring like the one found frequently in this region: hammered in fine gold, with an embossed decoration and a hanging stone. His head protrudes towards the back because, as customary in Tumaco, it was deformed when he was a child to indicate his high social position. The nature of a powerful and distinguished person in his society is evidenced in this portrait by the presence, on the textile headdress, of a serpent with sharp tusks curved backwards, with extremely marked scales on his body, which in fact resemble feathers. On his back he has a large decorated cylinder that in the upper side looks like a funnel: anybody in those days who saw that object would have known what it was and what it meant, but we can only say that some of the Yotoco pinheads of the neighbouring region of Calima, seemingly of a later period, carry the same object on their backs. EL