Three-pointed stone (trigonolito)
Three-pointed stones (trigonolitos) are Taíno zemí carvings shaped like a low mountain, with a point at each end and one on top. Ramón Pané wrote in the 1490s that the Taíno believed stones with three points made the yuca (cassava) grow.
Meaning
Among the kinds of stone cemí Pané lists are some with three points, “and they believe that they make the Giuca (Yucca?) to grow.” The Met says three-pointed stones had a symbolic link to yuca, a staple root crop; they range in size from handheld to heavy, carry human and animal zemí imagery, and may have stood for the mountainous island landscape. Jesse Walter Fewkes named them three-pointed in 1907, where Otis Mason had called them mammiform, and sorted them into four classes: a head on the front point and legs on the back; a face on one side of the cone; the cone itself made into a head; and plain stones with no carving. The NPS nomination for Caguana, citing Antonio Stevens-Arroyo, calls them the most common form of zemí, used for the fertility of crops and of childbearing.
Origin and history
Pané wrote at Columbus’s command during the second voyage (1493–96). Where the stones are found has changed with time. Fewkes wrote that they were confined to Puerto Rico and the eastern end of Santo Domingo and had not been reported from Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas or the Lesser Antilles. The Met now says they come mostly from the Greater Antilles, with some from as far south as the Grenadines. Excavations at ball-court sites such as Caguana have produced them.
Yúcahu, lord of the yuca
Pané was told that the highest being is immortal in the heavens and cannot be seen, and that the people call him Iocahuuague Maorocon; Bourne notes that Las Casas gives the name as Yocahu Vagua Maorocoti. His mother is Atabey. The Kislak Collection at Miami Dade College calls Yúcahu the lord of cassava and the sea and the source of sustenance. Pané describes Yúcahu and the three-pointed stones in different chapters and does not connect them.
The frog stone
One stone Fewkes illustrates has a human face on the front of its cone and a frog carved on the back, the frog’s nose forming the peak.
Read next
- Next in Taíno symbolsCaguana petroglyphsCaguana, in Utuado, Puerto Rico, is a Taíno ceremonial centre of plazas and ball courts (bateyes) lined with upright stones, many carved with faces and figures. The National Park Service calls it the largest site of its kind in the West Indies.
- The same shape in Hanukkah symbolsDreidelA four-sided spinning top played with at Hanukkah. Its Hebrew letters, nun, gimel, hei and shin, stand for “a great miracle happened there”; in Israel a pei replaces the shin, for “a great miracle happened here”.
See also
Zemí (cemí), Taíno sun (Sol de Jayuya), Coquí (the frog), Atabey (the Woman of Caguana), Guabancex (the hurricane), Turtle.
Sources
- Three-Pointed Zemí (Trigonolito) (the Met), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record 818530 (lent by the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object description
- Three-cornered stone, Taíno (the Met, 1997.35.2), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record 317826 (1997.35.2), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object description
- Ramón Pané, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, c. 1498 (Bourne’s translation, 1906), Edward Gaylord Bourne, “Columbus, Ramon Pane and the Beginnings of American Anthropology”, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, 1906: Pané’s account translated from Ulloa’s Italian text of 1571, with Eden’s 1555 English of Peter Martyr, American Antiquarian Society (Internet Archive), Bourne’s introduction; chapter I and note; chapter XIX
- Jesse Walter Fewkes, The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands (1907), Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1903–04, Washington, 1907, Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 110–111
- Caguana Site, National Register of Historic Places registration form (NPS), National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places registration form, Caguana Site, Utuado (reference 92001671; National Historic Landmark 1993), National Park Service, section 8, pp. 19–23
- Mother and Child, Taíno/Arawak (MOAD, Miami Dade College), Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College, Jay I. Kislak Collection, Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College, object description
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from triangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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