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Coming of Age Ceremony

  This tribe’s coming-of-age ceremony might be one of the most intense and painful I've ever heard. A tribe living in the Amazon performs a ceremony to all the boys ( starting as young as 12) before they can be considered ‘men’. During the ceremony, they fill gloves full of bullet ants, and the young man has to put his hand inside for 10 minutes. The bullet ants sting is said to be 10 times worst than a bee, and being stung by hundreds is an unimaginable pain that goes on for 24 hours (that’s when the toxin fully leaves the body). Just doing this once already seems extreme but they have to take part in this 20 times before becoming a man. This is certainly an extreme ceremony, but also just shows just how strong each member of their tribe is.     Although this seems very foreign to me it’s still impressive that they are all able to undergo this kind of pain, even the kids. They are truly strong people for willingly facing this ritual, and I admire that. At first, I t...

Anthropology

Talulah May Mr. Roddie IHHS 8/24/20 We have certainly evolved since the Nacirema time and knowing this, its fascinating to see how different our cultures and beliefs have changed over time. To sustain good health, steady relationships, and satisfaction from their gods they endured an amount of pain so great that it makes me think was it all worth it? I would imagine this crossed some of their minds, but nothing made them stray from their beliefs, which I find fascinating and quite impressive. Now we can say that these rituals were extreme and dull-witted, but I’m still impressed with the devotion to their beliefs. They went to so many extremes just to please those in which they believed, and to me that is admirable. I'm also curious why these people would give the medicine men so many riches when they were notorious for death. Most of their rituals ended with death and even one of the kids mentioned that he didn't want to enter the palace because “that’s where you go to die”, y...