The 1960s and 1970s brought the sexual revolution to the world. The 1990s brought wider acceptance of alternative lifestyles. This past decade saw the proliferation of “real life” on reality television, with pretty frank scenery, edited for cable of course. So it’s no wonder the Western World seems more relaxed when it comes to certain taboos.

However, free thinking when it comes to love and sex reaches farther back than recent history. This openness really goes at least as far back as the people of Mesoamerica.

According to anthropologist Michael Coe, few, if any, sexual taboos, existed for those indigenous cultures. “Pleasures of all sorts were very important to the people of pre-Columbian America.”

An item in the Library’s Jay I. Kislak Collection holds the key to this revelation, or revolution, as it were. The Oyohaulli Pendant is symbolic of pleasure, according to Coe. Figures in elaborate scenes of Toltec iconography, for example, often can be seen wearing Oyohuallis.

Coe discussed his research on the pendant in a lecture in 2009 at the Library. His presentation was featured in the June 2009 issue of the Library of Congress Information Bulletin.

Selections from the Kislak Collection are featured in an exhibition titled “Exploring the Early Americas.” The exhibition examines indigenous cultures, the drama of the encounters between Native Americans and Europeans, and the changes caused by the meeting of the two worlds.

The Library’s extensive Margaret Mead collection presents the noted anthropologist’s studies of the peoples of Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Bali, and Native North America. Mead brought the ideas of anthropology to a general audience and helped popularize the notion that there are many different ways of organizing human experience. Selections from the collection are available in the online exhibition “Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture.”