Top 7 unusual cultures around the world
Communities from all around the world have their unique culture and traditions which they tenaciously hold on to. While some of these traditions might be acceptable to outsiders, some seem outrageous.
The Battle of The Oranges
Dating back to 1808, the Ivrea Carnival is one of the oldest festivals in Italy. Carnival is celebrated all over the world, especially in countries with a large Catholic community. From Rio de Janeiro to Rome, people take to the streets to eat, drink, and celebrate the season. After days of festivals and parades, Carnival culminates in one last night of partying called Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras. But town of about 23.000 people near the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region, northern Italy Ivrea, Carnival includes a unique tradition: the Battle of the Oranges.
The origins of the fight are a little murky but seem to date back to a medieval revolt. In the 1100s, Ivrea was ruled by an evil tyrannical duke. The legend says that this duke tried to attack a young miller’s daughter on her wedding night. Instead, she decapitated him and started a revolution. Following her lead, the townspeople of Ivrea stormed the palace and burned it to the ground.
The Battle of the Oranges marks the end of the Ivrea’s Carnival, every year since 1947. It is fought for three days, from Sunday to Shrive Tuesday. It is played between the nine teams of Aranceri (orange-throwers) on foot, who represent the people who revolted, and the Aranceri on horse-drawn carriages, who play the role of the feudal armies. The battle is a mix of passion and solidarity. It is very common to see rivals shake hands, showing respect to one another, recognizing each other’s skills and courage.
The Walking Dead Of Tana Toraja
Located in the mountainous island of South Sulawesi, deep in the heart of the lush jungles of eastern Indonesia, Tana Toraja is known as the “Land of the Heavenly Kings.” There, Torajans are renowned worldwide for their beautiful tropical climate, harvesting delicious arabica coffee and cocoa beans…and their bizarre funerary rites.
The people of Toraja adhere to cultural guidelines that see their lives constantly revolving around death. Following in the traditions of their ancestors, funerals supersede in both expense and extravagance their marriages, birthdays, and—in a way—are ongoing year-round holidays.
The Torajans see death not as an event to be mourned, but as a celebrated transition to their ancestral resting place, Puya. In fact, Torajans do not even view members of their community as being dead until their public funeral has been completed. Prior to this ceremony, once an individual’s sunga, or biological life, has ended, their body is mummified and kept in a special room within the tongkonan, the traditional Torajan home. There, the family continues to speak and interact with the decaying body, including symbolically feeding and caring for it.
During this time, the deceased is considered to be to makala or to mama, sick or asleep. The funeral service, aluk to mate, can occur years after death as the family saves money for the funeral, sometimes even at the expense of living in poverty.
One of the most important aspects of the funeral is a painted bamboo or wooden effigy made in the exact likeness of the deceased, called a tau tau, which Torajans believe hosts part of the soul. The tau tau is carried alongside the body through the village in a colorful parade procession that can be upwards of a mile long and last for hours.
After the funeral has been completed, the body is rather interred within a mausoleum, a tomb built into the face of limestone cliff walls, carved into mammoth rocks, inside of a hollowed-out tree, or hanged from a mountain in a bamboo frame. Wherever it may be, the tau tau stands as a silent sentinel, watching over the final resting place and family of its subject. In exchange for its service, gifts, such as beer, candy, and money, are regularly left with the tau tau.
Arguably the strangest aspect of this culture is the ma’nene. During ma’nene, corpses are exhumed from the grave, cleaned, and dressed in new clothing. If needed, maintenance is conducted on their crypt, their casket repaired or replaced. The mummified remains, now freshened up, are paraded through town, where relatives can take pictures and videos with their family members who have passed. While some may see this practice as macabre or grotesque, the Torajans look at it as a powerfully devotional act of veneration and faith, a love which simply does not cease with death.
The people of Toraja have developed a booming tourism industry surrounding these unusual funerary ceremonies. Be aware that if you want to be a part of a Torajan funeral, you should be prepared to bring gifts for the family of the deceased (such as cigarette cartons or bags of sugar) and can then expect to partake in coffee and sweets with them.
Finger cutting of the Dani tribe
The death of a loved one can be a traumatic experience and causes emotional pain and suffering. However, in some cultures the loss can result in physical pain as well. Certain cultures believe this physical representation of emotional pain is essential to the grieving process. This can be seen in the Dani tribe in Papua, New Guinea. Some tribe members have cut off the top of their finger upon attending a funeral. This ritual is specific to the woman population of the Dani tribe. A woman will cut off the top of her finger if she loses a family member or child. The practice was done to both gratify and drive away the spirits, while also providing a way to use physical pain as an expression of sorrow and suffering. The Dani tribe members have the religious belief that if the deceased were a powerful person while living, their essence would remain in the village in lingering spiritual turmoil.
The practice is performed by first tying a string tightly around the upper half of the finger for about 30 minutes. This allows the finger to become numb for a “near” painless removal. The finger is removed by using an ax and the open sore is cauterized both to prevent bleeding and to form new-calloused fingers. The left over piece of finger is dried and then either burned to ashes or stored in a special place. This ritual is now banned in New Guinea, but the practice can still be seen in some of the older women of the community who have mutilated fingertips.
Throws Babies From a 30 feet Building
For over 700 years, Muslim and Hindu worshipers in certain areas of Ritual in India have been known to practice the rather terrifying ritual of Baby tossing where toddlers are being taken to a temple or mosque where they are thrown down from the top of a thirty feet high building in front of hundreds of witnesses. The ritual was considered a way to impress god so he would grant their babies good luck, long life, and prosperity.
On the day of the ritual, all the newly born babies are taken to the temple or mosque by their parents. There, a priest takes the babies to the top of the building and tosses them one after the other. Though the act is said to be a demonstration of the worshipers’ faith in their god’s ability to miraculously catch the babies before they reach the ground, there has not been any proof of the efficacy of their belief because measures are taken to ensure the safe landing of the babies — as there are usually a group of men waiting on the ground to catch the descending babies using a large blanket.
Hanging Coffins
China
According to Cui Chen, curator of the Yibin Museum, hanging coffins come in three types. Some are cantilevered out on wooden stakes. Some are placed in caves while others sit on projections in the rock. All the three forms can be found in Gongxian where most of China's hanging coffins are located. The coffins are mainly clustered around Matangba and Sumawan where some 100 coffins are hung on the limestone cliffs to both sides of the 5,000-meter-long Bochuangou.
Survey reports from the early 1990s show Gongxian County having a total of 280 hanging coffins. However in the past 10 years or so nearly 20 have fallen. The coffins were hung at least 10 meters above the ground with the highest ones reaching 130 meters. Unlike previous conservation work, which focused only on consolidation of the wooden stakes, this time the experts also worked on the coffins themselves. In addition they grouted the cracks in the rock where this was necessary to stabilize the limestone of the cliffs.
The Bo people have become lost in the pages of the history of human civilization. There is now some urgency in the work to salvage and protect the last somber record, which they have left us in the form of their hanging coffins.
Philippine
Mountain Province in northern Philippines PEOPLE OF SAGADA have long practiced the tradition of burying their dead in hanging coffins, nailed to the sides of cliff faces high above the ground.
The elderly carve their own coffins out of hollowed logs. If they are too weak or ill, their families prepare their coffins instead. The dead are placed inside their coffins (sometimes breaking their bones in the process of fitting them in), and the coffins are brought to a cave for burial.
Instead of being placed into the ground, the coffins are hung either inside the caves or on the face of the cliffs, near the hanging coffins of their ancestors. The Sagada people have been practicing such burials for over 2,000 years, and some of the coffins are well over a century old. Eventually the coffins deteriorate and fall from their precarious positions. The reason the coffins were hung was due to the belief that the higher the dead were placed, the greater chance of their spirits reaching a higher nature in the afterlife. Many of the locations of the coffins are difficult to reach (and obviously should be left alone out of respect), but can be appreciated from afar.
When you should go to travel there Do not touch or walk under the coffins. Bring binoculars or a telephoto camera to view these remarkable coffins from a respectful distance.
Throwing cinnamon at 25-year old's in Denmark.
Breathe, singletons - Valentine's Day is over. If you live in Denmark, you being unmarried on your 25th birthday gives people social license to pelt you with cinnamon. The streets of Denmark are often covered in cinnamon - and it's part of a long-standing tradition. When you turn 25, if you're unmarried, it is customary in Denmark for your friends and family to cover you in the spice
This tradition may date back hundreds of years to when spice salesmen would travel around and remain bachelors because they were never in one place long enough to settle down with someone.
Many of these salesmen would never find a partner, and would then be referred to as Pebersvends, which means “Pepper Dudes.” A single woman is thus called a “Pebermø,” or “pepper maiden.”
This makes sense on your 30th birthday, where the cinnamon gets upgraded to pepper. If they're feeling super mean, Danes sometimes add eggs to the mix because it “helps with adhesion.” Contrary to what the actions suggest, nobody is being judged for still being single at 25. The average age of men getting married in Denmark is 34 and a half, and for women it's 32. Rather than a punishment, the tradition is just an excuse to play a prank and be silly with your friends when they reach milestone ages.
The Festival Of Scrambled Eggs
Cimburijada, also known as the Festival of Scrambled Eggs, takes place each spring in Zenica, Bosnia. This festival has been celebrated for hundreds of years, and marks the changing of the seasons. Each year, thousands of locals and tourists gather on the streets at dawn to celebrate the first day of spring.
This festival marks the arrival of Spring. Spring brings with it the joys of renewal and rebirth. The weather becomes warmer and stays the same for days along with the vernal equinox. Leaves start appearing on the trees and crops begin to flourish. This festival syncs with the cherry blossom festival of Japan. People of Bosnia celebrate the joy of this splendid season and welcome its arrival through scrambled eggs.
People gather along the Riverside early in the morning of the first day of spring. The egg dishes are prepared on the Riverside. Cimbur or scrambled eggs are prepared in open air with hundreds of eggs scrambled together. This dish is the distributed among the people freely. The festival takes place mostly in the Kamberovica field along the Bosna River. The egg is a symbol of new life. The tradition dates back a few hundred years. This attracts visitors from around the country.
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