June 2nd, 2020: Land Diving/Pseudo-Gothic Bungee Jump

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Practiced on Pentecost Island In Vanuatu, this ritual involves the boys and menfolk jumping off a very scary looking spiky wooden tower with a long vine wrapped around each ankle.

this picture is from an article in the Express, but after discovering this phenomenon and before settling on this double image, I pootled around Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Brittanica and also learned about Cargo Cults and the Prince Philip Movement (who consider QE2's worse half a divine being..). Welcome to the wormhole of my evening...... (no more links, create your own wormhole....

Do not want.

See, I remember seeing this as a kid and assumed the natives were simply unsophisticated. Why else lash together sticks and use vines? But this is like 40 years later in my life, and I know there is nowhere left in the world that hasn't been pulled forward into the technological age. Sure, there is poverty, and some areas are more advanced than others, but Pentecost island can't be a bunch of savages any more.

They do this because it's a tradition, and probably because the tourists come. Normally they dress like we do.

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The images of this practice have been etched on my brain for close to 60 years when I saw the motion picture "Mondo Cane."
I have to admit I saw it in the theater several times. It was a controversial and quite satisfyingly lurid film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondo_Cane

National Geographic magazine covered it when I was a kid, and glatt is right it was governed by tradition even back then.
The ones that couldn't figure out vine stretch broke their necks or failed the touch the ground with their hands.