Who invented ear stretching

Ear stretching has always been, and still is today, a popular and beloved type of body modification. Ear Stretching Kits. Ear Weights. One of a Kind. Tribal Earrings. Belly Button Rings. Captive Rings. Cartilage Rings. Circular Barbells. Industrial Barbells. Monroe Rings. Nipple Rings. Fake Septum Rings. Tongue Rings.

Shop By SIze 16 Gauge 1. Over 2 Inch. Materials Acrylic Plugs. Bone Plugs. Glass Plugs. Click to see full answer. Correspondingly, did Native Americans stretch their ears? Those in the tribe with long stretched lobes are well respected. The longer the ears were stretched , the more revered a person would become to the tribe.

One may also ask, what cultures stretch their ears? Mexican and Central American civilizations Aztec and Mayan men are traditionally known to have had stretched ears. The Aztecs crafted plugs from gold and silver for the higher-class men whereas the lower class wore materials such as shells, wood, and copper.

The Maasai also stretch their earlobes using stone, wood, and bones. They usually wear beaded earrings on the stretched earlobe and smaller piercings on the top of the ear. Traditionally, both men and women stretched their earlobes, because long, stretched lobes were seen as a symbol of wisdom and respect.

Ear piercings occurred among both males and females. Children first had their ears pierced at an early age. He also has a lot of other cool pictures, so check him out :. Can you talk about ear stretching without talking about Africa? Well, you can, and I have. Pictured to the left and right are some great images of plugs worn by Coptic Christians over the centuries. Those earrings also show the heavy influence of the Byzantine culture on Egyptian Christians.

Mark visited Egypt around 42 CE, and started converting folk, and when he left there was quite a community there. Fragments of Christian documents dating back to the 2 nd century also support the idea of a thriving church in Egypt at that time. Ethiopia was, during the middle ages, considered to be one of the locations of the famed Christian Kingdom of Prester John, which turned out to be little more than a legend Although there was a Christian dynasty on the throne there.

Today, Coptic Christians can be found across Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Libya where they make up a sizeable chunk of the population. Kenya has been inhabited since forever. There were prehistoric cultures there two million years ago, Homo habilis and Homo erectus were there duking it out until we came along, and during the stone age there was a thriving community of Homo sapiens, aka Us.

But in more modern times, like since we started writing things down, Kenya has been home to diverse groups, ranging from the Samburu and Maasai 5 th to 1 st century BCE to present to the Swahili 1 st century CE to present to the Sultanate of Zanzibar. The Bantu, who moved in around the 1 st millennium CE, comprised of a dozen different ethnic groups like the Meru, Kikuya, and Ambeere.

I mention this so that when you look at the pictures of all the cool plugs from Kenya, and each one has a different culture attached to it, you can understand just how diverse this nation is. Today, Kenya is a thriving nation, home to the city of Nairobi, a metropolis of 3. They number about , people and are part of the Bantu peoples, which includes something like ethnic groups. They are primarily Muslims, since the 9 th century, and many forms of Muslim dress are popular among the Swahili.

Many of their plugs show the strong influence of the Islamic style of jewelry seen in Egypt during the middle ages and bears a resemblance to the jewelry of Morocco with its fine metalwork. Because of their extensive trade with Indian, Arab and Persian merchants around the 10 th century CE, the Swahili people began living in a series of city states across a wide swath of the east coast of Africa. They connected the raw good of Africa with traders in nations all over the east. Earlobe stretching is practiced by both men and women in Swahili cultures, and different kinds of jewelry can be used to indicate different social statuses.

Many plugs I found were specific to married men or women, while single people would wear something different. The Swahili city states were active throughout the middle ages, and were hurt badly by the Portuguese, who took control of the trade in the 15 th century. The language Swahili is still widely spoken, and members of the various Swahili sub-groups are still sizeable chunks of the population in countries all over the east coast of Africa.

One of the things that his work denotes pretty clearly, aside from the beauty of these people and their amazing jewelry, is that the stretching in this culture was largely limited to women. Islam in Morocco goes back to the 7 th century CE, when a group of Umayyad invaders brought it in with them. After that, a bunch of different Islamic dynasties were founded that united and controlled the region around Morocco, and today Islam accounts for Most of the jewelry you see here is from the last years or so, and seems to have died out as a style in Morocco in the early 20 th century.

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