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The piercing of the lips for the insertion of objects into them is very widely
practised throughout the world, however only two tribes pierce the lips with a
ring; the Dogon tribe Of Mali, and the Nuba of Ethiopia. Among the Dogon the piercing
of the lip has religious signifigance, they believe that the world was created
by their ancestor spirit "Noomi" weaving thread through her teeth, but
instead of thread out came speech. All the other lip piercing that is practised
in the world is done with labrets, which can either be a pin of wood, ivory, metal,
or even in one case quartz crystals. Among the tribes of Central Africa, and South
America the Labret piercing is stretched to extremely large proportions, and large
wooden or clay plates are inserted.
Among the ancient Aztecs and Mayans labret piercing was reserved for male members
of the higher castes, they wore beautiful labrets fashioned from pure gold in
the shape of serpents, golden labrets with stones inset and ones of jade or
obsidion (labret in Aztec "Tentetl"). The Native Americans of the
Pacific Northwest, and the Inuit peoples of northern Canada and Alaska wore
labrets fahioned from walrus ivory, abalone shell, bone, obsidian, and wood.
The Makololo tribe of Malawi wear lip plates in the upper lip called Pelele.
The African explorer Dr. Livingstone asked a chief the reason for this, in surprise
the chief answered "For beauty! They are the only beautiful things women
have. Men have beards, women have none. What kind of person would she be without
Pelele ? She would not be a woman at all."
"The plug of wood in the lips, which became little by little a disk, and
then a real plaque, was in some manner a sign of possession of the husband of
the Djinja woman. It is the man who is to marry her, and very often him alone
who operates, transfixing the lips of the young girl with a blade of straw forms
the first sign of the deformation to which she will be subject as an adult.
It is in sum, a betrothal rite."
Dr. Muraz reffering to the Saras-Djinjas tribe, who insert lip plates up to
24cm in diameter in both lips. Chari River South of Lake Chad in "Nudity
to Raiment" Hilaire Hiler London 1929
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