What did you do when you "became a man"? -
No, I don't mean losing your virginity, though in many cultures, coming
of age is intricately linked to sexual maturity. Did you celebrate by
buying a Lotto ticket? Drink a yard glass full of beer? Become a Bar Mitsvah?
Well, weaklings, be thankful that you didn't grow up as an aborigine
in Australia, in the Satere Mawé tribe in the Amazon, or in the
Sepik River tribe of Papua New Guinea. As you can see below, some cultures
take the rites of manhood very, very seriously.
Let's take a look at six of the Strangest Coming of Age Rituals in the
World:
Walkabout
In the walkabout, adolescent Aborigine boys are sent to live in the wilderness
for as long as six months. It's not just about camping - they go on a
spiritual journey to trace their ancestor's songlines, which include navigation
instructions and other ancient wisdoms encoded in songs.
Initiation with Bullet Ants
To become men in Amazon's Satere Mawé tribe, boys as young as
twelve have to first wear ceremonial gloves filled with stinging bullet
ants. They're called not bullet ants without a very good reason: being
stung by these suckers feels very much like getting shot. Each ant packs
neurotoxins that cause pain 30 times more agonizing than the sting of
a common wasp.
And if you think that's bad enough, wearing the gloves once just doesn't
cut it - you have to wear it for 10 minutes 20 times to become a man ...
Steve Backshall went through the ritual and described it in The
Sunday Times:
I had suffered several hundred stings, and all of a sudden I went
beyond pain. The sensations are not describable using simple words or
metaphors, so I’ll just try to describe how I reacted.First, I started wailing, then, once that had passed, the floodgates
opened — deep, guttural sobbing, uncontrollable shaking, writhing,
convulsing. You could see the neurotoxin kicking in, my muscles starting
to palpitate, my eyelids becoming heavy and drooping, my lips going
numb. I started to drool, and suddenly I wasn’t responding to
anything at all. My legs wouldn’t hold me up, and our doctor was
shouting at me to keep moving and not to give in to the urge to lie
down and let it take me.If there’d been a machete to hand, I’d have chopped
off my arms to escape the pain. The other boys were in a similar state,
but, interestingly, my host, who had been through the ritual before,
seemed far more in control.It took three hours for the pain to ease a little, and shortly
after that I was back playing footie with the kids — though with
a hand clasped in each armpit and a pause every few minutes to scream
a bit. Twelve hours later, my hands were swollen up like inflated washing-up
gloves. If I pressed a thumb into them, it took two minutes for the
impression to disappear from the fluid-swollen flesh.
Adolescent Circumcision
You don't have to go to remote corners of the world to find this next
ritual. Circumcision, the cutting of the foreskin of the penis, is practiced
(or forced upon, depending on your perspective) by as many as 1 in 3 males
in the world.
There is a lot of controversy about circumcising a male infant right
after birth, but at least the baby is too young to remember the painful
ordeal. Nay, as a coming of age ritual in Turkey (amongst other cultures),
circumcision is practiced on adolescent boys.
The origin of circumcision is lost in time. The most commonly accepted
version is that circumcision came from ancient Egyptians, who noticed
that a snake is reborn after it sheds its skin. And what part of the male
anatomy is closest to a snake? You got the general idea ...
British zoologist Desmond Morris noted in the documentary "The Human
Sexes" (clip above) that "I can't help feeling that if male
circumcision didn't exist today and someone tried to introduce it, they'd
be arrested for child abuse. But it's traditional role as a major rite
of passage is too entrenched to bow to common sense or objective medical
opinion."
Land Diving
In the tiny South Pacific island of Pentecost, boys as young as five
years old engage in a tradition that can be best described as the ancient
precursor to modern day's bungee jumping.
In Naghol (N'gol) or the land diving ritual, suicidally brave men jump
from makeshift rickety towers as high as 100 feet up in the air with vines
tied around their ankles. Land diving is kind of a multipurpose ritual:
a rite of passage, a way to appease the gods to ensure a good yam harvest,
and now, a tourist attraction.
So it's like bungee jumping - big deal, you think. Well, actually it's
a little bit more complicated than that. The whole point of land diving
is that the jumper's head touch the ground. But obviously if you're the
jumper, you'd want that to be as briefly done as possible: if your head
doesn't touch the ground, then it'll be a bad yam harvest. If your head
touch too much ground, the yam will be blessed but you'll die. The difference
between a good jump and a fatal one is about 4 inches of vine. It's no
surprise then, that a jumper is allowed to say anything he wants to anyone
before the jump and not be held responsible for his words (Source).
Blood Initiation
In the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the Matausa tribesmen believe that
in order for timid boys to become brave men and attract women, they have
to expel the contaminating female blood that they got from their mothers
during childbirth. In order to do that, they undergo a brutal bloodletting
rituals that involve shoving canes down their throats, sharp reeds up
their nostrils and plunging sharp arrows repeatedly into their tongues.
Crocodile Scars
If you think that the initiation rites above are bad, this one is downright
horrifying: the crocodile scarification of the Sepik River tribe of Papua
New Guinea (what is up with Papua New Guinea?!)
I'll leave the National Geographic video clip above to fill you in on
the details (warning: it's TERRIFYING!), but suffice it to say it involves
getting hundreds of razor cuts on their bodies to get that fashionable
"crocodile skin" look.
______
Obviously, the article above only covered coming of age rituals for men.
This doesn't mean that women don't have it rough - many coming of age
rituals for girls are very physically demanding, like Na'ii'ees or the
Apache Sunrise Ceremony, or the downright horrible ones like the Sunna
circumcision or female genital mutilation practiced in many parts of Africa.
I'd be the first to admit that the article is woefully incomplete (Cracked
also has an article
on this - I've taken steps not to repeat many of theirs) - if you know
of any other strange coming of age rituals, please add them to the comment.
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