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October 15, 2006
Strange Culture
I found the reading about the Mbaya people to be interesting, but I also found it to be a bit difficult to read The author jumped around quite a bit between describing the tribes' behavior and their art, and I thought some of the conclusions drawn were far-fetched. In particular, I was not convinced of the importance of duality to the Mbaya tribe members. I think every culture or activity on earth can be broken down into a duality of one tries hard enough. I would, however, be interested to see some photos of the people with the paintings actually on their faces as it's often hard to convey in writing how impressive decoration can be.
The most interesting behavior was certainly the practice of infanticide and subsequent adoption and raising of captured children to carry on the lineage. It seems so completely unintuitive that it's hard to understand how such a practice could have ever developed. Are the captured children so alike in appearance that there are no noticable racial differences? I would imagine the community would look like a marketplace.
Posted by Bryan Wall at October 15, 2006 02:14 PM