Some tribes around the world continue to practice their unusual and (to us) scary cultures, despite the modern world we live in.
Many of these tribes lead isolated lives and have little interest in the outside world, which is possibly how they manage to prevent the expansion of their long-standing customs. However, the rest of the world is fascinated by these strange tribes and cannot leave them alone, which is how we came to know about them.
So let’s look at some of the odd tribes that are still living in with scary practices even in the twenty-first century.
Seven of the scariest tribes in the world
Maasai
The Maasai are a semi-nomadic, pastoral indigenous tribe with an ancestral territory that stretches across southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. Known as “where the lions are scared of men”, this tribe has some very different practices than we are used to.
For the Maasai men, lion hunting is a rite of passage that proves that their boys are now men.
The people of Maasai also use spitting as a form of greeting. They spit into their palms before handshakes. Family, friends, and well-wishers spit in newborn babies as a sign of joy and prayers. Fathers bless their daughters by spitting on their foreheads on their wedding day.
Even scarier is their special diet of blood and milk. The Maasai are predominantly cattle rearers; they believe that God has put all the cattle in the world in their care. Therefore, their meal plan revolves around cattle and they have found some really interesting ways of mixing things up.
From eating raw meat to their mixture of cow blood and raw milk, sourced directly from the cow, their innovation seems to know no bounds.
Caribs
Do you believe cannibals exist?
On several Caribbean islands, there are still people practicing cannibalism. These people are known as Caribs, named by Colombus from the name Kariba, which means “those who eat people”.
They are the first in the world to practice cannibalism, which later spread to other parts of the world. Caribs are one of the world’s most dangerous and scariest tribes.
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Aztecs
One of the scariest tribes in the world, the Aztec people that dominated central Mexico around the 15th century are often depicted as brutal and bloodthirsty. This reputation was apparently reinforced by the recent discovery of a “tower of human skulls”.
These tribes participate in human sacrifice, cutting out the living victim’s heart and cooking the meat for food. This is because they worship the sun and moon, hence they perform human sacrifices on days when there is a full moon or no moon at all, in order to appease the deity.
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Suri people
The Suri people inhabit the mountains of the Great Rift Valley in the plains of southwestern Ethiopia and pride themselves on the scars they carry.
Painful rituals, dangerous fighting ceremonies with sticks, and painful lip plates define the Suri tribe. Yeah, remember that man from Black Panther?
They are also known for the large disk plate they insert in their lips and their scarification. These scars are rites of passage for both men and women.
For the men, it is a show of courage and bravery to scar themselves.
As a tribe that is constantly at war with neighboring tribes, the Suri believe scarification will get the young men used to blood whilst the women see it as a sign of beauty.
Korowai
The Korowai, also called the Kolufo, live in southeastern Papua in the Indonesian provinces of South Papua and Highland Papua. They practice cannibalism as a means of justice in the jungles of southeastern Papua. Animal sacrifices are common among Korowai and their lives revolve around magic and spirits.
Korowai people are among the very few tribes believed to eat human flesh.
They live about 100 miles inland from the Arafura Sea, which is where Michael Rockefeller, a son of then-New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared in 1961 while collecting artifacts from another Papuan tribe. They never found his body.
The Korowai allegedly kill and eat male witches they call khakhua.
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Aghori
Also known as where men drink from skulls and eat human flesh to connect with gods, the most popular Aghori ritual is their act of eating human corpses.
The Aghoris are one of the most feared and scariest tribes in India. They are infamous for their dark and deadly quest for spiritual enlightenment. Despite believing in reincarnation, their ultimate aim is to break the reincarnation cycle to achieve transcendence.
By using cannibalism, the Aghoris embrace death and reject world custom.
Aghoris live among India’s cremation sites – where Lord Shiva and goddess Kali are said to dwell – and feed on what others throw away. They collect the remains of uncremated bodies and use them for their spiritual enlightenment, wearing the corpses, consuming them, or building altars from them.
Apart from feasting on human flesh, Aghoris also drink from human skulls and chew the heads off of live animals.
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Yanomami
Spelt also as Yąnomamö, Yanomama, Yanam, or Senema, these are the largest relatively isolated tribe in South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela.
They are also one of the scariest tribes in the world as they bury their dead by consuming them.
In a typical Yanam burial, they burn the dead body and use the ashes to paint the faces of the mourners. Next, they gather the bones and grind them into powder, mixing them with the ashes and into bananas to make soup. This is a local delicacy of the tribe.
The Yąnomamö believe that only through this burial ritual can the soul can attain eternal peace.
Scariest tribes in the world: Conclusion
So, there you have it. Some of the scariest tribes in the world. Call them barbarians if you will, but the truth is these tribes are untouched by civilization and are isolated by choice. Majorly because they strongly believe that contact with the outside world will pollute their customs and traditions.
