Tɨpmeaman is the mythological name of the tall Borassus fan-palm that crowns the ancestral mound set before the men's ceremonial house in Central Iatmul and neighbouring Sawos villages. Named as the 'brother' of the sago palm, it gives botanical form to the pervasive dual structure of Middle Sepik cosmology, in which paired beings and species divide and balance the world. The mound it surmounts marks the site of a mythical past, associated with founding ancestors and with the stone settings on which the heads of slain enemies were once laid.