Savior Simulator

Chapter 867

From now until Gao Fei and others leave, this stilt house will be their foothold.

This house built with thatch and mangroves has an indoor area of ​​about 50 square meters. The floor is paved with bark, and moss grows in the corners that are not exposed to the sun. In this wet and rainy season, the walls and floors emit a scent Musty.

There is a clay stove in the house, and blackened iron pots hang from the eaves.

The only decoration in the house is a row of bones hanging under the eaves that serve as wind chimes: pig bones, crocodile spine bones, crane camel leg bones...and human skulls.

"The Asmat people have the habit of preserving the skulls of their relatives since ancient times, just like we preserve portraits and photos of our ancestors."

Tangning introduced to the curious companions.

Goofy stood in the veranda, carefully observing the human skulls used as decorations, and found that there were two types of skulls.

After asking Pep and Tangning, I learned that the relatively complete skull was the skull left after a normal death; the other type had holes in the temples or lacked mandibles, which were the spoils obtained by the owner in the headhunting war.

At this time, a person came over and pulled Pep to whisper.

Seeing his beaming expression, Gao Fei suspected that this guy was a profiteer, and tried to persuade Pep to help him sell local products, treating tourists as wronged species, and mercilessly slaughtered them.

Pep listened silently to the man, and gave him a pack of tobacco and a net of betel nuts. The man accepted the gift, smiled with satisfaction, and beckoned the tourists to follow him.

"What are you going to do?" Goofy asked Pep.

"Take you to visit the newly completed Bixi Pillar." Pep pointed to the big house opposite, "If you're not interested, you don't have to go."

"Bishi Pillar is the essence of Asmat culture. It is rare to see it. This is a good opportunity!"

Tangning is very interested in folk culture and warmly invites everyone to visit together.

Anyway, they are here, and Gao Fei doesn't mind opening his eyes.

In addition to headhunting and cannibalism, the greatest contribution the Asmat people have made to the history of world civilization is their unique woodcarving art.

Nine out of ten foreign tourists who come to the village are to visit and buy woodcarving works.

Among them, the most famous wood carving artwork is the "Bishi Pillar" - a totem pole that condenses the essence of Asmat's traditional culture!

The carvings of the Asmats, such as drums, shields, spears, bowls, oars, etc., are very exquisite, but their artistic value is not comparable to that of Bixizhu.

It is a complex wooden column carved from mangrove branches, not less than 6 meters high.

Each pillar is engraved with a row of ancestral heads stacked one above the other, and those who are eligible to be engraved are all very important figures in the history of the tribe.

The bases of the pillars are carved with canoes, snakes and crocodiles, and the raised parts on top are carved with headhunting symbols.

The three-dimensional details, dynamic lines on this column were all carved by hand without drafts or drawn lines.

The limbs and faces of the portraits are intertwined with praying mantises, hornbills, and crocodiles, presenting an ingenious fusion of strength and beauty.

Goofy also saw symbols representing male and female genitalia, a sign of fertility, on the Bisci column.

This is not only the case for the Asmats, but "reproductive worship" is reflected in primitive tribal art all over the world, such as totems, sculptures and murals.

"The word 'biu', from 'mbiu', refers to the spirit or soul of the dead."

The knowledgeable Tang Ning introduced the significance of Bixizhu in folklore and sociology to Gao Fei and others.

"In the Asmat culture, Bizizhu is regarded as a bridge between life and death."

"The Asmats believe that after death, people will enter the second world of the earth, a place similar to the edge of hell—that is, 'Limbo' in Christian discourse."

"In order to travel across this world to Savannah, the dead need the help of the living."

"The Asmat people advocate the dualism philosophy of 'balance of life and death'. A person's death must be caused by an enemy, whether it is direct death or a magical curse."

"So if someone in the tribe is killed, relatives and friends must seek revenge in order to maintain spiritual balance."

"When the number of dead has accumulated to a certain amount, the tribal leader will call on the tribe to build the Bixi Pillar and launch a headhunting operation aimed at restoring the balance of the world."

"After the completion of the Bixi Pillar, people will attack everywhere to hunt the heads and rub the blood of the victims on the Bixi Pillar. The souls on the Bixi Pillar will be sacrificed to help the living."

"For the Asmat people, Bizizhu is not only a symbol of the existence of ancestors, but also a reminder of the responsibility of the living to avenge the dead."

Finally, Tang Ning added:
"In the traditional concept of the Asmat people, if the bisi celebration ceremony is not held, people's memories cannot be aroused, new heads cannot be obtained, and life and happiness cannot flow back from the ancestral world - Savannah In the human world, once the balance chain of the cycle of life and death is broken, the world will also usher in destruction."

Gao Fei silently listened to her narration, and naturally connected the world view of the Asmat people with the great changes in the environment in reality.

The Asmat area is the most severely affected by the silver flash outbreak and the largest "magic power enrichment area" in the world today.

Along the way, the special police team has been attacked by mutated monsters several times. If they were not strong enough, they would have died on the journey.

It is conceivable that the aborigines of the Asmat tribe living here can experience the sharp deterioration of the living environment better than foreign travelers. They have seen more and more mutated monsters in the wild, and they are increasingly attacking the village. .

Especially in the depths of the rainforests and swamps where government forces cannot reach, facing the growing security threats, hearing and witnessing monster wounding incidents, the spiritual world of the Asmat people will inevitably be greatly impacted, and how to explain this intensifying situation what about the disaster?

Gao Fei imagined that he was a conservative Asmat. He didn't understand the bullshit "Silver Flash" eruption, and he didn't understand that the periodic rise of Blue Star's magic power was a natural law. He would definitely attribute the bad situation to the wrath of ghosts and gods. Blame it on the fact that the balance of the unity of opposites and unity of life and death has been broken, so there are so many weird monsters running out of Savannah, the underworld, killing humans frantically.

If you are an Asmat, what can you do in the face of such a predicament, the tide of monsters and beasts that you can't resist and the government doesn't care about?

It’s not that they can only seek comfort from traditional religions, but they can only pin their hopes on the Pixi Pillar, expecting to appease the raging ghosts and gods by holding a grand Bixi celebration ceremony.

(End of this chapter)