The 'Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice, other Inhuman and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013' is a piece of Indian legislation aimed at tackling the problem of religious human sacrifice and other similar activities 👇🧵
The specific clauses of the act cover a range of magical and religious acts that could lead to harm, death or manipulation - eg coercive sex or theft of money. The list is so specific you have to imagine each of these things has been reported before.
The origins of the bill go back to 2003 and every step of the legislative process has faced fierce opposition. One of its greatest advocates, Dr Narendra Dabholkar, was shot dead in 2013 by Hindu nationalists.
Despite the bill being passed in Maharashtra, India has a huge problem with human sacrifice and religiously motivated murder and mutilation.
To take a few examples from just the last few years - in Sept 2024 a seven year old boy in Uttar Pradesh was ritually killed, in order to bring greater fortunes to his school.
In 2023 five men were arrested on suspicion of murdering a woman in a temple in Guwahati, they allegedly used machetes to behead her as part of a religious rite to mark the anniversary of one of the killers' brother’s death.
In 2022 two women were lured into a house in Kerala and tortured, before being killed and dismembered. The perpetrators were said to be occultists attempting to receive divine fortune through the ritual murders.
In Oct 2024 a man killed his grandmother with a trident and offered up her blood at a nearby temple, before attempting suicide himself.
There are too many of these examples to list out individually...
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Implementation of the bill continues to slowly roll on from state to state, but how effective it will be remains to be seen.
It is difficult to get a handle on exact numbers for these types of crimes, but it looks like the Maharashtra Act has been useful for law enforcement and the crime figures have increased in that state, reflecting better reporting and sentencing.
It's worth pointing out that this Indian legislative initiative had a direct impact in Uganda, who have modelled their own 'anti human sacrifice' bill based on the Maharashtra example
*Haiti Update April 2025* - the international Kenyan led forces have failed to dislodge the gangs now running the capital, cholera outbreaks have been noted, gang rape is rife and the homicide rate continues to increase.
Rival gangs are looking to spread outside of Port-au-Prince, targeting prisons, roads and buses for kidnapping operations. There's something surreal about the fact that a gang faction called 'Taliban' has a stronghold in a suburb of Port-au-Prince called Canaan.
Politically Haiti is currently ruled by an unelected council, since it has been unable to commence elections and there are no legitimate politicians left to rule. The hope is that new elections will be run in Nov 2025, but the gangs are seeking to destabilise this situation.
Around AD 1500 this six month old child was buried under a pile of flat stones and sealskins, in the shadow of a large cliff at Qilakitsoq, Greenland. Centuries later experts determined he was likely buried alive, on the body of his mother 🧵
Qilakitsoq is in eastern Greenland, and was occupied by the Thule Inuit, who arrived circa AD 1250. They pushed out the original Dorset Culture people, and named the site Qilakitsoq, meaning 'that which has little sky', a reference to the high cliffs.
In 1972 a pair of brothers out grouse hunting stumbled upon a burial site in the cliffs.
Somewhere between 500-800 million people rely on cassava root as their main source of carbohydrate. Incredibly it looks like many of them suffer from chronic cyanide poisoning as a result of improper preparation
The quantity of cyanide depends on the cultivar, growing conditions and differences between the root and leaves of the tuber. The amount ranges from 15-1000mg cyanide per kilo of root.
Turning raw cassava root into a safe and edible food requires careful processing to reduce the cyanogenic glycosides. A combination of crushing/fermenting, plus drying seems best - some simple methods like boiling do very little to detoxify the root.
A thread on the Pacific Dwarf mythology that accompanied the Austronesian expansion - the Primordial Little People Type-Tale
The dominant hypothesis as to why many Austronesian-Polynesian cultures have a foundational little-people story, is that when the proto-Austronesians arrived in Taiwan they found a short statured Palaeolithic people already living there.
This theory was recently strengthened by the discovery of 'negrito-like' human remains in Taiwan, dating back around 6000 years. The skull shows many similarities to other Negrito and African San peoples.
In 2016 the British Dental Journal identified a new child protection issue - the sub Saharan practice of gouging out the healthy tooth buds of children, euphemistically called 'Infant Oral Mutilation' (IOM) 🧵
IOM is the practice of removing erupting infant teeth in order to prevent ill physical and spiritual health - the buds are believed to be tooth worms or bad spirits which cause diarrhea and fevers. The cure is to remove the primary teeth.
The teeth are extracted in an extremely crude and painful manner, using bike spokes, penknives, hot nails, fingernails, razor blades etc, without anaesthetic and with the high risk of blood loss and subsequent infection, including passing on HIV or hepatitis B.
Thread of pictures from Australia, taken from the book Peoples Of All Nations (1922) Vol I.
The British authors survey both the European and Aboriginal inhabitants, considering the former to be a "sub-type of the British race... far more assertive, self-confident, ruthless"
"The Sturdy Stock They Raise On Australian Farms" - the authors mention the low birth rate in the cities, but praise the outdoor Australian lifestyle, as well as pointing to new technologies replacing older rural livelihoods.