Insane Tribal Body Modifications
Thu, Aug 13, 2009
Environmental Graffiti Will be Changing Dramatically Soon. Get a Sneak Preview By Signing Up Here.
Members of the Mursi tribe, Ethiopia
Image: Marc Veraart
Teeth sharpening, ear elongations, lip plates, nose studs and giraffe necks – beauty truly lies in the eye of the beholder. But whatever body modifications may be in vogue now, it’s all been done before by tribals around the world, often for hundreds of years. Let’s delve into the fascinating world of piercings and other body art and see some truly amazing pictures.
The Mursi or Murzu are a nomadic cattle herder tribe living in Ethiopia close to the Sudanese border, one of the country’s most isolated regions. The Mursi population is estimated at 6,000 to 10,000. Mursi women are famous for wearing large plates in their lower lips, a sign of endurance, maturity and therefore beauty among the community.
A Mursi woman with an elongated lip but without lip plate:
Image: Beka
Another Mursi woman with traditional headgear and lip plate:
Image: Monkeyji
How does one eat with this?
Image: Marc Veraart
But not only women elongate body parts as a rite of passage. The Rikbaktsa are an ethnic group that lives in the Amazon rain forest of Brazil’s Mato Grosso region. They are also sometimes called Orelhas de Pau (“Wooden Ears”) because of the men’s custom of wearing wooden disks in the elongated earlobes.
Rikbaktsa boys have their ears pierced during a ritual celebration at the age of 14 or 15 when they are capable of hunting large animals and know about traditional ceremonies. This rite of passage marks the young man’s transition into adulthood and eligibility for marriage with the boy exchanging his child name for his adult name. The Rikbaktsa tribe today has only 909 members and the ritual of ear elongation is not followed any more among the young men.
Rikbaktsa man with wooden ear discs:
Image: Calliopejen
The Apatani tribe lives in the Ziro valley in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India’s north east. Apanti women were considered the most beautiful among the Arunachal tribes; so beautiful, in fact, that they had to make themselves look unattractive as protection from invaders from other tribes. Hence, Apanti women wore large wooden plugs in their noses, a tradition not carried forward by the younger members of the 26,000 people-strong tribe today.
Older Apanti tribal women:
Image: Doniv79
The Kayan are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic minority in Myanmar most famous for the many brass coils that the women wear around their necks, elongating them to unusual proportions. Because of conflicts with the military regime, many Kayan tribes left Myanmar in the late 1980s and early 1990s for Thailand, where the women’s long necks have become tourist attractions.
The brass coils are placed around girls’ necks when they are about five years old. Each coil is then replaced with longer ones. The neck is not actually lengthened as much as the weight of the brass pushes the collar bone down and compresses the rib cage. Once placed, the coils are only removed to replace them with even longer ones.
One has to start early for a giraffe neck:
Image: Diliff
When asked about the significance of this body modification, Kayan women refer to reasons of cultural identity and beauty. Anthropologists have long speculated about the exact significance of the brass coils and have come up with theories about them making the women more attractive, less attractive or preventing the women from getting bitten by tigers. In recent years, younger women have started removing the coils.
A Kayan woman with traditional neck rings:
Image: Steve Evans
Teeth sharpening is a very painful form of body modification that women of South Asian tribes have undergone for many years. It is considered the ultimate when it comes to beauty. The Bagobo women below of Mindanao, the Philippines eastern most island, must have spent many hours of having her teeth chiseled with a stick and some wood…
Dracula would be proud:
Image: haabet2003
Last but not least, here’s a video of a British doctor who visited the Mentawai tribe in Indonesia to learn more about body rituals such as tattoos and teeth sharpening. When asked how and why the tribal women endure the pain, often for days, the answer was simple: beauty.
If you want to find out all the latest news on the environment, why not subscribe to our RSS feed? We’ll even throw in a free album.
You Might Also Like Our Friends' Posts From the Intertubes
“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else.”
August 13th, 2009 at 6:58 am
OUCH and OUCH, painful to even look at some of this stuff, never understood body mutilation.
August 13th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I find it a bit hard to believe that part about teeth sharpening D: wouldn’t that make the teeth to get some sort of infection that could spread through all of the body? :/ ew :x
August 14th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
@DragonBlogger:
Makes tattoos look harmless, doesn’t it?
@ENORCA:
Pain is often exactly the point – enduring pain shows maturity and side-effects like infections are tolerated as part of this rite-of-passage ritual. If you watch the video, that’s exactly what the doctor discovers.
August 17th, 2009 at 1:20 am
I have seen the rings on the neck and disks in the lips on nature shows, but I have never seen the sharpened teeth. I would have assumed that doing that to the teeth would cause nerve damage in them. We need anesthesia for a cavity, but I guesss the nerves in their teeth heal.
Still, I know what it’s like to eat fast and bite my cheeck with my molars. I bleed and it hurts. I can’t imagine biting myself with sharp teeth. OW!!!
October 13th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
In recent years, younger women have started removing the coils.
That was/is correctly. It was common in the past as one coil go down to younger sisters, because they was soo poor. And in 2006 some girls removing the coils in a strike. But to day they have pay for the use of coils, and in 2008 all Karen peoples get a civil registration number in Thailand, after threat about one united emigration of the long necked women. So they are very proud of there long neck. They are happy by their culture, because this female-dominated society fit fine in the modern world, opposite many male-dominated societies, like the Japanese society, where the women strike, and refuse marriage and children.