16 Most Extreme Cultural Body Modifications In The World

Nitin Bhatt
3 min readMar 9, 2017

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Body Modification is the word with weirdest term with scary implications for those who have no personal interest in the subject. In the simple terms, “Body Modification” means to intentionally alter one’s physical appearance. It is assumed that it applies only to piercing and tattooing. But the term has much huge implication then just tattooing and piercing.

With examples from around the world, Here are some of the most extreme forms of body modification in the history of man.

1. Women from the Kayan Lahwi tribe in Myanmar start adding brass coils to their necks from the age of five, the weight of which pushes the collar bone down and compresses the rib cage to give the illusion of longer necks

2. A woman from the African tribe of Mursi in Omo Valley, Ethiopia, displays her lip plate

3. A woman in 2008 from a Baka tribe of pygmies in the Dzanga-Sangha Forest Reserve, Central African Republic.

4. In Indonesia’s Dani Village, New Guinea, some women like this one cut off the tips of their fingers when a relative dies

5. Dennis Avner, also known as the Stalking Cat, was a Nevada man famed for his extreme body modifications who died in 2012 at the age of 54.

6. A worshipper at the 2012 Vegetarian Festival in Phuket, Thailand, where men and women prove their religious devotion by taking part in ritualistic self-mutilation and pain trials

7. This Mursi woman, pictured with her infant, is not wearing her lip plate but the gaping hole remains.

8. Another woman from the Mursi tribe wearing a lip plate and a set of cow horns atop her head. The more decorative her appearance, the higher her standing is

9. A young woman in South Omo, Ethiopia, with similar scars on her arm

10. A member of the Bagobo people from coastal Mindanao in the Philippines displays filed teeth in a photo taken circa 1910

11. A man from the Abyei region of Sudan with scars inflicted on his forehead

Reference: 16 Most Extreme Cultural Body Modifications In The World

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