Here is a truly curious pair of shoes. They are so-called khutaitchi shoes, made by a sorcerer or magician of the Central Australian Pitjantjara tribe. In traditional Aboriginal beliefs, there is no such thing as a natural death, which means that there is usually an […]
It did not take long for the Mongolian assistants to realise that something was terribly wrong. The jingling and rattling sounds coming from the bags on the heavily loaded camel exposed their terrifying cargo: a complete set of shaman equipment. Powerful artefacts imbued with spirits, […]
Did you know that the famous 5.300-year-old ‘iceman’ Ötzi found in the Italian Alps in the 1990s carried around a fungus that worked as an antibiotic? And that it would have helped him alleviate the symptoms of the parasites scientists have found in his colon? […]
I think most of us will agree that 2017 has been a bit of a crazy year. It has been the year of Trump and his Twitter wars on everything from North Korea to Meryl Streep to his own White House staff. There has been […]
The word ‘fetish’ probably brings up some rather saucy mental images to most of our readers. But in anthropology, a ‘fetish’ is an object, which is considered to be imbued with spiritual power or magical potency. This metal spear from Boulon in Burkina Faso might […]
So, I don’t know about you guys, but often when something bad happens to me, I can’t help but wonder: Why me? Personally, I think the Pende people from DR Congo have come up with an answer that makes just as mush sense as any […]
