For nearly a century, the Tambaran cult had been the artery of life for Ilahita, a large village in northern Papua New Guinea. In 1984, everything suddenly changed. In the course of a dramatic iconoclastic spell, Ilahita's men violated a fundamental taboo of Tambaran by disclosing its secrets to the women and shattering its revered ritual paraphernalia. A belief system that had provided spiritual guidance and social solidarity for several generations had thus been contemptuously purged. Donald Tuzin (1997: 33), who spent several years studying Ilahita, observes that with the fall of Tambaran

It seems remarkable that members of a community would ruthlessly dispose of their own sacro-sanct spiritual symbols. Yet, the fate of Tambaran reflects the adaptability of religion to changing circumstances, a quality responsible to a large degree for its perseverance and vibrancy from pre-historic days to the present.