thumb|150px|The Quimbaya Poporo, gold, attributed to the pre-Columbian [[Quimbaya civilization in the Andean region of present-day Colombia, ca. 300 CE]] A Poporo is a device used by indigenous cultures in present and pre-Columbian South America for storage of small amounts of lime produced from burnt and crushed sea-shells. It consists of two pieces: the receptacle and the lid, which includes a pin that is used to carry the lime to the mouth while a person is chewing coca leaves. Since the chewing of coca is sacred for the indigenous people, the poporos are also believed to have mystical powe
thumb|150px|The Quimbaya Poporo, gold, attributed to the pre-Columbian [[Quimbaya civilization in the Andean region of present-day Colombia, ca. 300 CE]] A Poporo is a device used by indigenous cultures in present and pre-Columbian South America for storage of small amounts of lime produced from burnt and crushed sea-shells. It consists of two pieces: the receptacle and the lid, which includes a pin that is used to carry the lime to the mouth while a person is chewing coca leaves. Since the chewing of coca is sacred for the indigenous people, the poporos are also believed to have mystical powers and social status.
In Colombia, poporos are found in archaeological remains from the Chibcha, Muisca, and Quimbaya cultures among others. The materials used in the early periods are mainly pottery and carved stone. In classic periods gold and tumbaga are the most frequent: an example of this is the Poporo Quimbaya, which is a national symbol and is exhibited in the Gold Museum. In the early 21st century, the indigenous people of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta still use poporos in the traditional way of more than one thousand years ago. They are made with the dried fruits of a plant of genus cucurbita (totumo).
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).