would be too heavy to be supported by such a brittle handle. To 
the best of our knowledge, no functional explanation of this type 
of protuberance has been offered. They are all in shape very 
suggestive of mushrooms. One of the pots figured actually has 
painted flecks on the cap which might lead one to suspect that it 
represents Amanita muscaria, even though the species is believed 
not to have existed this far south in pre-Columbian times. These 
and other pottery artifacts, considered in detail by Furst (Furst, 
1974), tend to support the belief that mushrooms were impor- 
tant in pre-Columbian art in more than one locality in the Andes 
of South America. 
VI. 
It has only recently been discovered that the fly agaric Aman- 
ita muscaria, has deep-rooted religious significance and is still 
ceremonically used by the Ojibway Indians living on Lake 
Superior in the United States (Wasson, 1979) and that Indians 
of the Mackensie River area of British Columbia, Canada, sim- 
ilarly employ this hallucinogen (Halifax, pers. comm.). 
It is possibly significant that the Mackensie River area, being 
largely glacier-free in the Pleistocene, may have been one of the 
main routes taken by early man on his migrations from Siberia 
to the Americas. 
Perhaps it may not be superfluous, in closing, to point out 
that from Asia ancient mythological ideas stemming from the 
use of hallucinogenic mushrooms and their concomitant associ- 
ations are traceable in European witchcraft, in the cult of soma 
in the Indian subcontinent, in the use of fly agaric in Siberia and 
at least in two contemporary and unrelated and widely separated 
indigenous groups in North America. 
In view of the recognized widespread magico-religious use of 
mushrooms in the New World, we believe that the interpretation 
of the Colombian “telephone bell gods,” as mushroom-related 
artifacts, represents perhaps the most plausible explanation thus 
far advanced and that it may be of the utmost importance in our 
studies of the role of hallucinogens in aboriginal societies of the 
New World. 
PX) 
