Most cultures attach a special significance to reaching puberty, whether it’s celebrated with a first Holy Communion or your dad buying you your first bottle of Star. Then again, there are some cultures out there that still don’t consider it a real rite of passage unless it involves something so gruesome that most of us wouldn’t do it as adults. For instance …
Mentawai Girls File Their Teeth into Points
Look, we know that different cultures have different standards of beauty, and one culture’s George Clooney is another culture’s Omobaba. So it gives many of us hope to think that somewhere there might be some remote Amazon tribe that considers the beer belly and neck-beard combo irresistible. Don’t tell us it’s impossible; after all, the Mentawai tribe of Indonesia think that having pointed, daggerlike teeth is the epitome of sexy.
The Mentawai are so convinced that pointed teeth are more attractive than flat that the men would probably be more interested in your canines than your cleavage. And for the women of the tribe, it means that once they reach adulthood, it’s time to have their teeth chipped away and filed down to points, because how else will they catch the eye of a potential husband?
As you might expect, having someone hack at your dentition with a hammer and chisel wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience, and the process left the teeth damaged and prone to infection. Sexy infection.
The process is less common these days, since the march of Western culture has pushed out a lot of obscure tribal traditions.
Boys of the Fulani Tribe Whip the Crap Out of Each Other
Fulani boys become men by engaging in an epic battle of wills with members of rival clans. The sharo ritual consists of two young boys entering a ring shirtless, each carrying a long cane or whip. The boys then take turns striking their opponent three times across the ribs and back as hard as they can. The whole tribe will gather to watch the battle, and the winner is chosen by the crowd. The “winner,” by the way, is the one who opens the deepest, bloodiest wounds on his opponent, and who flinches less when his own insides are being exposed to the elements.
But it’s not just the boys who have all the fun in Fulani culture. In the spirit of gender equality, girls have their own coming-of-age ritual to endure, which involves receiving an elaborate facial tattoo like little Mike Tysons. Once again, it’s important to the ritual for the girl to show no discomfort during the hours-long session of being stabbed in the face. Because that’s the kind of thing that only a child would do.
Maasai Boys Hunt Lions
For most of us, the most stressful thing about our transition into adulthood was asking someone to the prom. In other words, the worst case scenario was that you could have your heart ripped outfiguratively. Young warriors of the Maasai tribe in Kenya were less lucky. That’s because an important coming-of-age ritual for young Maasai hunters for centuries was hunting lions. As in fully grown, male, flesh-ripping lions.
Now, if you asked us to choose an appropriate weapon to hunt a fully grown lion with, we’d probably pick the world’s longest-range sniper rifle or, ideally, a predator drone. But the Maasai chose to take on Mufasa with nothing but a spear and a rawhide shield. The objective was to steal the lion’s tail, which was the surest sign of a badass. And, you know, it’s kind of hard to argue with that.
Also, just to ensure that the lion was nice and pissed off, young warriors had to wear special bells on their legs in order to annoy the beast. Unsurprisingly, the mortality rate for attacking the king of the Serengeti with nothing more than a sharp stick and youthful enthusiasm was pretty high.
In recent years, though, the Maasai elders have discouraged solo hunting, and instead the young men will now do it in groups of about 10 or so. We should clarify that they didn’t decide this out of concern for the hunters’ safety — it’s that lion populations have dropped so much that there’s no longer enough lion to go around.
The Native American Trial of Horrors
The Mandan tribe really didn’t mess around when it came to proving their manhood. Their rite of passage, called the okipa ceremony, basically came about when a bunch of them sat down to brainstorm the most horrible things that they could possibly do to a person.
First, the young men weren’t allowed to eat, drink or sleep for four days, after which they had a friendly-sounding celebration called the bison dance. When the dance ended, that’s when they had wooden poles driven through their flesh and were suspended screaming from the ceiling until they passed out.
It was only when the young warriors fainted that they were allowed to come down from the rafters. When they awoke, it was seen as a sign that they had gained approval from the spirits, and they were from that moment men. And that’s when they had both of their pinkie fingers chopped off and were made to run around the camp a few times while still impaled with wooden rods and spurting fountains of blood from their hands.
Harmar Cow Jumping in Ethiopia
This rite of passage for men coming of age must be done before a man is permitted to marry. The man-to-be must “jump the cattle” four times to be successful and only castrated male cattle and cows may be used to jump over. This test is performed while naked (except for a few cords bound across the chest) as a symbol of the childhood he is about to leave behind him. On completion of this test, the young man joins the ranks of the maza – other men who have recently passed the same test and who spend the next few months of their lives supervising these events in villages throughout the Hamar territory.
