Every member of our species naturally fears death, given that we can never satisfactorily answer the question of what comes next. And so we’ve invented a zillion different ways of coping with that anxiety, many of which involve rituals that confirm a belief in the spirit’s indestructibility. Few of these rituals, however, are quite as […]
Want to ruin your chances of attending a Chinese university? Simply get tattooed: At the National Entrance College Examination of 2009, Zhong was accepted into a major university in Chongqing. But after the physical examination, the university ultimately refused to accept him because of the wolf head on his chest. Zhong’s university dream was broken. […]
By any reasonable measure, scleral tattooing—that is, the injection of ink into the eyeball—is far from a widespread fad. As far as we can determine, in fact, a grand total of three people have had their corneas inked for non-medical reasons. They are body-modification enthusiasts whose story made a stir on The Tubes two years […]
Our semi-regular First Contact series continues with a look at the needlessly violent encounter between Captain James Cook and the Maori of New Zealand. Cook himself is our source, as he was a fastidious diarist during his travels around the world. And he recorded the strange events of October 9th, 1769 in great detail. Things […]
Tags:Captain James Cook·First Contact·Maori·maritime·Sydney Parkinson·tattoos
Once again we’re pressed for time as the screenplay calls, so today’s NtHWS Extra will be yet another visual quickie. The illustration at right, of a Konyak Naga chest tattoo circa 1923, comes courtesy of the great J.H. Hutton, arguably the great dean of Naga anthropology. Hutton did several tours up in the Indo-Burmese hills, […]
Tags:Add new tag·headhunting·J.H. Hutton·Nagas·Now the Hell Will Start·NtHWS Extras Month·tattoos·Verrier Elwin
In the process of prepping a special series on first contacts (which will launch next week), Microkhan recently became acquainted with the work of John Webber, an English painter best known for accompanying Captain James Cook to Hawaii. Fortunately for us, Webber did not share Cook’s bummer of fate, and went on to create some […]
Tags:Alaska·anthropology·Captain James Cook·First Contact·Hawaii·John Webber·painting·tattoos
