5 Strange ancient traditions

Our ancestors were incredible people and had a level of knowledge that we will never truly understand, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t make mistakes from time to time, or consistently for hundreds of years to be more accurate. Here’s a few of the traditions that the people we descended from used to practice on a regular basis.

Foot Binding

This Chinese tradition started sometime between the late Shang dynasty and early Song Dynasty which makes this practice from around 1000 BC. The reason foot binding started in the first place is not known, but one story claims a late Shang empress had a deformed foot and made foot binding compulsory when in court, but this is only a legend. The most popular story is that having small feet was a very attractive quality and young girls would have their feet bound from as young as 5. This tradition became so popular that during the 17th century any girl who wished to marry was required to have her feet bound. The practice is no longer mainstream but does still happen in some parts of China.

Human sacrifice

If someone told you to kill your dog in order to be able to grow more potatoes next year you’d probably think they were crazy, but this mentality was so common place, certain cultures went through huge amounts of effort and even started wars just to get enough people to sacrifice to whichever god they believed in. There isn’t a country on earth were a person wasn’t sacrificed at some point to a god in one of the cultures that existed there, with everyone from the Celts and the Romans to the Native Americans and African tribes having human sacrifice in one of their religions at some point.

The best known example of human sacrifice would have to be the Aztecs who loved to kill people for various reasons. They would send their armies to capture entire towns and villages just to bring them back and execute them, a practice that saw an estimated 20,000 deaths per year. When the temple of Huitzilopochtli had its first official ceremony in 1487, an estimated 80,000 people were killed as an offering to their gods.

Eunuchs

A Eunuch is a man who’s had his genitals cut off, usually as a punishment but as with ancient Chinese traditions, to put him in a place of power or service. In ancient China a man would have his genitals cut off in order to be ale to serve in the Emperors palace and look after his wives and concubines with no danger of being able to get them pregnant. They also had a hand in politics since they couldn’t have children, they weren’t able to pass down their positions which often meant they were chosen purely for their talents.

Young boys who were close to puberty would sometimes be castrated and forced to live a life as a singer, with the young high-pitched voices never being able to develop. In most other cultures the practice of creating Eunuchs was done purely as a punishment, but at one point it became so popular in ancient China for the advantages it opened up in politics and work positions that self-castration had to be made illegal.

Neck Stretching

This practice of placing metal rings round someone’s neck to stretch it was common in parts of South America, Africa and south-east Asia. Rings are added to a persons neck to the point were its putting pressure on their skull and shoulders, then over time the body adjusts and loosens up, at which point they add more rings. It was supposed to be a sign of beauty but it isn’t actually the neck that’s stretching, but rather the shoulder bones bending down. The actual neck remains the same size but the flattened shoulders make it look as if its longer. Since it takes years to stretch someone’s neck, the bones weaken and the shoulders can no longer support the weight of the skull naturally, which means if someone with a stretched neck took off all their rings the bone would likely break.

Religious drug use

Using narcotics in religion is as old as history itself, with every culture who had access to drugs using them in various rituals and religious practices. In the northern hemisphere the choices were limited to mushrooms, poppies and a few select plants, but in the Southern Hemisphere where the plants naturally grow, drug use was widespread across many countries. In south-east Asia during a dig, a 7,000-year old grave was found that appears to belong to a shaman that has a number of items buried with him as offerings, amongst which was 789 grams of cannabis.

African cultures had access to the most variety of drug-bearing plants, with Shamans and witch doctors tripping out and prophesizing various ridiculous things. Where there are drugs there are people willing to take them, but the strange effects and hallucinations our ancestors didn’t understand led them to believe they were visions or some kind of divine feeling, and so were used heavily in religion.