A Curious Anthropological Case Study of the Mi-Sha Tribe

 photos of some monkeys on a tree

 surrounding mountains.

  

Part I.

I am a backpacker and an amateur anthropologist. I first discovered the Mi-Sha tribe in 2010 in the southwest part Yunnan Province of China, on the borderline with Myanmar, while trekking and actually got lost in that part of the jungle . They dwelled in the wet mountainous jungle region that was still not in touch with the modern civilization. They were among the last savages in the world, and their world is very, very different from that of ours. Upon first encounter with them, they were absolutely horrible, smelly, and offensive in every manner describable; nevertheless after spending over two years with them, I slowly started to admire their unique way of life for its simplicity and purity. But I shall stress that there is nothing noble about it, I don't think they are the types described by Rousseau as the "noble savages"; they are simply a type of human animal.

Their population is small. I estimate only about 300 to 500 of them residing in a few villages ranged in a radius of a few hundred miles. Their hunting Area of Operations cannot exceed more than a thousand miles, so they are completely cut off from the rest of the humanity. The idea of 12 to 16 years of education is non-existent, for them their life is a learning experience. They don’t know that the earth is round or that men had already reached the moon, I could even fool them that I am an alien from another planet. But I just told them I am from the outside world, even though I am completely assured that they don’t know what that is. Their world is still within the standard of the paleo- and meso-lithics. They have not even developed bronze and irons. They are the true, living, hunter-gatherers.

They are of the ancient Mongoloid type. They have brownish skins, straight black hairs, and not very hairy. The men and the women had almost the same hair length, which is about a foot or two, when it’s too long they just chop it off with a dull stone knife. They seem to be quite adept at their coiffure styles. Sometimes they would tie it up, other times they would just let it loose, like rock stars. The men average around 5’3” to 5’5” and the women averages about 4’5” to 5’ tall. I have never see anyone exceeding 5’5” so I was like relatively a giant to them (I am 5’11”). Certainly one’s size is a predominant factor in their society, the bigger you are, the better you stand in the social ladder, so I have received well treatment from them. But the averaged statured fellows do also maintain their dignity and honor. Age is also a determinant factor. The older you are, the more respect you deserve in the village.   

Because their environment is that of a tropical jungle, they are completely naked for most of the times. Men only wrap up their penises for tactical purposes when they are out hunting. And women only wrap up their lower parts with rough fabrics made of yarns and hemp during menstruation. Children run around naked all the times. They occasionally covered themselves with animal skins when it rains and the weather gets a bit chilly; but this does not happened often as their environment is hot and humid around the year. The idea of hygiene is very basic. For example they don’t defecate or urinate around where they eat and sleep, but they don’t use toilet paper, baby-wipes, shampoo and soaps. They simply clean their bottoms with some leaves, which are ample all around, and the occasionally bathe themselves in the river. They seemed to also enjoy very much spending times in the water, frolicking and horsing around, like children.

They are the most curious people I have met, and they are so completely isolated from the rest of the world that I shall say they are a living fossil specimen of how we, as hominids have once lived in a very distant past. Here are some of the case studies I have gathered during the period I have spent with them.

The idea of monogamy is non-existent. Children were raised with their mothers, or communally, and were quite independent by the age of seven or eight. Women whore themselves around for complete pragmatic/survival purposes; in hard times you can have sex with them for a piece of yam or banana. Children do not know who their fathers are, but they looked at elder men altogether as a sort of father/mentor figures, and looked at each others as brothers and sisters. Also I do not think the idea of “romantic love” exist in their society, as in my opinion it is a complete cooked-up notion by consumerism and Hollywood. Men and women freely have sexual intercourse and they exchange partners as casual as we dined at different restaurants during different weekends. So I didn't discovered much jealous and love/hate crimes in their society. Everyone seemed to be for the most part, peaceful and harmonious. Women in their lifespan will give birth on average, about ten children, but infant mortality isn't low, so at best only half of them reach to adulthood. Public fornication is a common scene, you can be at the river bathing, and the dude next to you just feels like humping a girl by your side, you can feel free to join them if you want, while all the children are playing around in the water near you, not really paying much attention to want you guys are doing.   

Social hierarchy is loose, but still in existent. The village elders, both males and some females were, as a group, a committee if you will, in control of the rest of the constituents. If there is a dispute, which is rare, the village elders had the final say. Males as a whole seemed to have a dominant role in the society, and the females for the majority were the subservient roles. However idea such as slavery were still too “modern” for them, a by-product of the advent of civilization, so there’s no such thing as slaves in their world. The idea of private property is still non-existent. Warfare between villages is very rare, but I heard from the elders that even if it did happen, as in the past, they killed all their opponents, whose number weren’t that many anyway, and took over the rest of the women, who were not so extremely opposed to the idea of being conquered, and even eat their enemy if they feel like it.   

Cannibalism is not frowned upon but rarely practiced. I guess eating your fellow kind is never any creatures’ top choice on their menu. Nevertheless, say if they somehow had a beef against each other, from simple dispute such as your ate my yam to you stoned my mom to death, in a fit of rage the idea of “I will eat your guts and drink your blood” is not as outrageous as we might think in the civilized world. They also occasionally practiced it in hard seasons, as I have heard from some of the village elders. But they still refrained from deliberately murdering someone just out of hunger, it was just that someone passed away due to starvation, and the rest were like, hey, let’s not waste the meat since we’re so famished as well.

The idea of gourmet cuisine is still non-existent in their world. Their food tastes horrible according to modern standard, nevertheless if you've been starving for over a week and starting to ditch away some of your modern civilization squeamish "standards", it is not as bad as you initially thought. Food is consumed both raw and half-cooked. For example they eat most insects and plants raw. Insects range from ants, termites, spiders, earthworms, roaches, etc., for them they’re crawly proteins, and all the same. Agriculture is still in its infancy in their society, they will tentatively plant something here and there but the result is rarely satisfactory; so they still primarily rely on their natural environment. They consume much fruits, which are abundant in their environment, but hardly as tasty as the ones you get in your local supermarket, they mostly taste all raw, sour, bland, and/or acerbic. Nevertheless I guess that’s where they get their major source of vitamins. Meat range from deer, monkeys, badgers, wild boars, rabbits, rats, moles, frogs, snakes, fish, mountain cats, etc., just any kind of meat your can get your hands on. They eat their meat by BBQ it on a bonfire and seasoned it with a type of plant so spicy that when it burns your eyes hurts as well; but I have to admit when you eat it with the meat, it definitely makes it more edible.  

They practiced a very unique ritual among the males who participated in it as a ceremony of adulthood, which is around the age of 15 (By the way they don’t really know their birthday or how old they are exactly anyway, so there is no birthday party or any anniversaries, for them I guess their life is a party). They will go for a hunting expedition in a group, about the size of 6 to 8, sometimes for weeks on ends, and basically just live off the land for the duration, and hunt specifically for a mountain cat that resembled a jaguar or a panther, quite large in size weighing over 100 lbs.. After they have killed it, usually in an ambush and round-off style, very strenuous and difficult that I shall admit; they will fornicate with it one by one, as gang-banging, regardless it’s a male or female, in the case of a male I guess they would just sodomize it. In a fit of bliss and ecstasy, they have proved to each other, their manhood. Afterwards they will bring the poor raped and dead mountain cat back to their village for communal consumption. They took special pride by keeping the cat’s teeth and wearing them on the neck, laced it with vines. I think the group alpha males always get to have the best teeth such as the canines, but every male adult I have encounter have some form of predator teeth adoring their neck.

As primitive as they are, they still do take much heed on their appearances from a cosmetic and aesthetic perspective. On the contrary from the teeth donning practices by the men, women adore themselves with all kinds of colored pebbles and rare stones, such as rubies and jade, the more vibrant colored the better, and they wear them on their neck, arms, wrists, ankles, sometimes on the heads as well. I have to admit that as primitive and uncultivated as they are, during the years I spent with them, I still manage to spot a few pretty girls, and out of the irrepressible primeval male urge, I have also consummated my relationship with two girls. I do not know how many children I have fathered since I am unsure whether or not the children they give birth to are mine anyway. They are in the age between 15 to 17 (I wouldn’t be sure of their true age anyway since they are oblivious about the fact themselves.). Women in the village achieved their true “womanhood” by the first advent of their menstruation cycle. After that, they usually give birth to their first child at/or around the age of 15.

They also took much attention to their body paints. Not exactly as permanent tattoos, as it is still non-existent to them, but they used charcoals and a brown-reddish form of tree rubbers to apply to their body, and they did that repeatedly and periodically so the paints stays on their skin pretty much permanently. The images on their bodies are very primitive: lines, zigzag lines, geometric shapes, such as circles, and triangles, etc.. Everyone has a variation of body paint and adornment, so in a way this is their form of “personalizing” as well. Kids mimic their elders and started to adorn themselves as well. Sometimes mothers adorn their babies too with variety of trinkets or body paints.      

On average the life expectancy of an individual is around 50 to 60. However I have met a few village elders who looks well in their 90’s, with almost mouthful of no teeth, emaciated and all, at least that’s what they appear to be. Ceremonial funeral are not conducted like we, “normal” people do, but the community do take effort to bury their dead, quite a distance away from where they live. They do not have a notion of afterlife, heaven and hell or the likes, but they do believe their fallen fellows live perpetually among them. And the idea does not intimidate them the least, for I have engaged in numerous conversations with them in which they said they just spoke with their deceased friends or relatives. They only buried the dead for a practical purpose, because they smell bad after they cease breathing for a long period of time. In a way they don’t miss their passed-away love ones so much the way we do, since they deem the dead ones are still among them, just residing in a different frequency I guess, so they still occasionally tuned into each others.

On a same train of thought I shall discuss a bit about their religion. I wouldn’t say their supernatural belief system can be categorized as an authentic religion, but they are definitely superstitious/religious/spiritual. I do not know if this is a form of shamanism, but they are definitely animistic and polytheistic. They believe the world is created by a supreme female god named “Na-Ra”. After she gave birth to the world out of her vagina, that is everything except we human, she then one day out of no particular reason, just felt like molding some people out of mud in the form of her own image. It is at that moment we human were created, after she created us she also told us that men shall rule over everything and dominate over the females (I don’t know who made that up or what HE was smoking or drinking but that was how the story goes according to their oral tradition past down from times immemorial by both old men and women.). Then she went to sleep or retire (sleep and retire is the same word in their language.) in the moon. They admired and marveled at the night sky very much and I have to admit, that the night sky from where they reside does indeed have a mesmerizing and charming effect on people, and that is where all your imagination springs from and your mind makes a transcendental leap, something that we urbanites neglects and overlooks.

They also revered the snakes the most, the fact of which does not really forbidden them from eating it, since the snake is something of a delicacy on their menu. They believe the snake lives forever and lives everywhere, in the sky, on the trees, in the water, and under the ground. The supreme super-snake that dominates the world, just under the female god “Na-Ra”, because she went to sleep/retire and no longer in active duty, is called “Na-Rong” or “Rong-Rong”. And he, according to all their folklore as a masculine figure, is the regent of the earth and constantly in active duty. They seemed to fear him more than Na-Ra, since he’s the boss who’s in charge, and also he’s the boss in charge of water, life and death. When it rains, which is quite often in their tropical region, and it thunders and lightens, they believe Rong-Rong is out there making his almighty presence and everyone should be fallen in line and pay their utmost deference. They somehow fear him and love him at the same time, without whom they think the world is not possible to exist.

Besides Na-Ra and Rong-Rong there are many gods with no names all over the places, according to different persons, different villages, different generations, and different versions. They believe there are gods in the air, trees, rocks, rivers, under the earth, even in your stomach; some are petulant, some are benevolent, some are cantankerous, others are malicious, whom you don’t want to mess with and should stay out of.

Their language is very primitive and basic. In my two years of sojourn with them I have mastered all of their language, whose vocabulary according to my calculations will not exceed 2000 words. They have no strict grammar rules so the subject-verb-object rule does not apply at all with them. If you got bitten by a bug, you can say “bug bit me”, “me bug bit”, “bit bug me”, or “me bit bug”, and somehow the idea come across exactly as how you intended to be. Once you have learned their language, which didn’t take as long as say, learning Latin or Greek, for me it took about half year, communication becomes pretty easy. They have names for all animals surrounding them, all the plants, trees and fruits, etc., but not to the point of such specifics as modern taxonomy. For example their word for water is applicable for pure water, salt water (which they have no idea of what it is), moist, wetness, and air. In a way, living among them is like living with toddlers, where “gugu” “gaga” “dudu” “coocoo” “kaka” all make much sense (“gugu” means worms, that is all worms, “gaga” means ducks and pheasants, “dudu” means earth, mud, dirt, turd, dirty stuff such as feces, and “kaka” is just an expression of scariness or cold.)

Daily life is actually pretty carefree and relaxed. The men actually had developed a primitive version of alcohol punch which they made by combining tons of different forests fruits in a giant container (usually made of wood) and fermenting it for a period of time, usually it won’t take that long since it’s so hot there all year round. It tastes horrible like vomits, the color of it range from green, yellow, to light orange, but the after effect is exactly the same: being buzzed. The dudes, especially the older ones, like in their 30’s, love it and they drink it whenever they can. Afterwards they fool around, have sex, eat, and sleep, not that different from us “civilized urbanites”. In my years staying with them, I have never found one instance of homosexuality in both males and females, so I couldn’t help but to think that the advent of which is possibly a perversion or deviation from the dawn of civilization. On the other hand, I do not think women have authentically experienced their G-spot or organism, but the idea of fornication with different men isn’t necessary an abhorring one at all, and I find especially the older ones, in their 20’s to 30’s, enjoyed it very much so. In numerous occasions, there were older women making sexual advances at me, and for the most part I tried to avoid them.

On the same train of thought I have to mention that there is also an idea of sex appeal in their society. Younger ones are always more preferable over the old ones. Large breasts and big butt is preferable over those who were less endowed. Men with taller stature and bigger muscles are also preferred over the lesser ones. Obesity, which is a very rare scene, is revered with great admiration, whether males or females, are always the most highly-priced ones, and they also ended up as the leaders of the village. There are also cases of a few very ugly, retarded, or handicapped ones, both males and females, who ended up as the outcast and misfits, who never really get laid. I have observed a retarded female got raped, but that isn’t much of a big deal for anyone. They seemed to enjoy sex very much, and it is definitely one of their favorite subjects in discussion, joking, and just generally having a fun time. The word for it is called “Choo-Choo”. Their second favorite subject is, of course, food, which they called “Chow-er”, or “Chow-Chow”. Men always hang out with their fellows unless he’s humping some girls. And Women always hang out together, young and old.    

They have already mastered the art of making fire, and could make a fire in relative ease with a sharpened stick and some cracked bamboo. After the initial spin with the stick on the bamboo and the tinder ready by their side, they would able to have a fire going easily. Their weapons of choice are stone knife, stone ax, stone-tipped spear mounted on a wooden stick, and all kinds of pointed projectiles and hooks made from animal bones, with that they can have harpoons and fish with real ease in streams and rivers in which I saw children around 5 years old could be able to do. 

I befriend a dude named “Tar-Wan”, which means “big/large stone/rock”, or “big boy/man”. He looks about 16 or 18, and is relatively bigger than his peers. So he’s considered an alpha male among his group of 10. He is no longer a virgin and I observed that many girls are really fond of him, which I assume, he had sex with quite a number of them. His mother’s name is “Cherubi”, which means red sky during dusk or dawn, or redish things of any sort. He’s got three younger brothers and two younger sisters, being the oldest, he’s definitely the family’s pride. None of them know who their father/fathers are.