Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional stories - Why do Himba women in Africa expose their upper bodies and smear them with red mud?

Why do Himba women in Africa expose their upper bodies and smear them with red mud?

It is possible that they exposed their upper bodies because of some special custom, no problem, and they were covered in red mud for a series of protective reasons such as sun protection and wind and sand protection.

The Himba are a minority primitive social group located in southwest Africa, and they are also included in the whole of Africa. Finally, they are a primitive tribe that insists on maintaining the original ecological environment, original ecological customs and living environment, and they refuse to adapt to modern times. In other words, scientific development, they finally returned to the vast virgin forest, and never had more contact with outsiders, just to maintain their original traditions. This is a characteristic of a primitive tribe that is about to reach its end. This is also their last act of resistance.

Primitive tribes in metropolitan cities often choose to retain their unique traditions, and ultimately do not communicate these with the outside world, which will only make their lives more difficult, because the process of scientificization is difficult to stop, and the pace of modern progress It is extremely fast. If we miss the link with modernization, we are likely to fall behind far beyond imagination and estimation. The total number of this ethnic group does not exceed 20,000, and they have developed into a patrilineal clan life.

This kind of ethnic group makes a living by raising livestock and planting, which is different from the usual small number of primitive tribes that mostly rely on hunting for support. Why do they like to smear their whole bodies with red mud? This is because they have a primitive worship of their ancestors. What they like is flames, so red mud often has a violent red and eye-catching red color. In this case, They will choose to express their most sincere worship of the flame with such a worship chart.

What was strange about this race in the past was that there were more women than men in this race, and then women would probably have a male-to-female ratio of 11, which resulted in the leader of the entire group being a woman.