Africa is considered the cradle of civilization: it was here that the remains of the ancestors of today's man were found. This amazing continent is still fraught with a lot of mysteries. It is probably better not to try to penetrate into some secrets - they can plunge an unprepared layman into real awe.
There is, for example, in the southwest of Ethiopia the mysterious Mursi tribe, whose representatives are easily recognizable by their protruding lower lip and ceramic plates of impressive size inserted there. According to one version, such a "decoration", which is often found among girls and women, helped them not to become victims of slave traders and lovers of local exoticism. But ethnologists do not share this point of view. Those researchers who studied the Mursi and even lived among them (for example, Shona LaToski) did not meet such judgments from the representatives of the tribe themselves. Moreover, a girl who can insert a larger disc into her lower lip (their diameter can sometimes reach 30 cm) is considered an enviable bride and, accordingly, the ransom for her will be greater than for one who is content with a diameter of “only” 10-15 cm.
Appearance is of great importance, so in order to get married, girls from an early age not only pierce their lower lip and remove their front teeth in order to insert a wooden plate (which is replaced with a clay plate with age), but also decorate their bodies with unusual tattoos. One man may have more than one wife (and sometimes a dozen!), So the competition for male attention is quite high. In the struggle for the attention of the opposite sex, the girls make cuts on the skin and launch parasitic insects there, which in the process of their vital activity leave scars of the most bizarre forms under the skin. On the neck, women of fashion from the Mursi tribe wear necklaces that consist of phalanges of human fingers, and often you can find more than one necklace, but several at once.
If you dig deeper, then the appearance cannot be compared with the "philosophy" of this unusual tribe. Mursi worship the spirits of death, and all his women are considered priestesses of death. And here, just very handy, comes the very plate that is used for the so-called "kiss of death." During love pleasures, women of the Mursi tribe offer their faithful soft drugs on a plate, which a man licks off a plate - this pastime replaces traditional kisses for a couple, after which the man plunges into intoxicating intoxication.
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At the next stage, which is called the "death bite", comes the turn of a heavier drug that is blown into the sleeping man's mouth, which often causes poisoning. At the same time, the high priestess of the village, who is chosen among married women, brews an antidote and, entering every house, distributes it, but not everyone is lucky. It is believed that only she and the demon of death know who to live and who does not, and therefore no one is surprised by the very different outcome of the case. When a member of the tribe dies, his meat is boiled and eaten, as well as used for decoration, and paths are built from human bones in especially impassable places.
As for men, the real man in the tribe is a warrior whose death demon is imprisoned in a body-dungeon - and he is released into the wild thanks to such a strange rite. Boys from an early age are prepared for constant danger and war, which is common for this tribe, and if a man does not have firearms, machine guns, which they obtain in various ways from neighboring belligerent countries (mainly in Somalia), then there is always at hand, at least, battle cudgels, with which they know how to handle masterly and often let them into business.
The population of the tribe, as noted by researcher David Turton in his work "African Affairs", is about five thousand people, and it is gradually decreasing - constant wars make themselves felt and, who knows, maybe a strange way of life, which the Mursi themselves are not at all think.
Alena Volkova