Kuru, a debilitating disease prevalent in the Fore tribe of New Guinea, yet not isolated to them. Guess what it’s from?

     Welcome back to another entry in Homer’s Vault of Mysteries! I pulled another fascinating book off of my magical mystical bookcase and wanted to take a few entries to go over some of the more interesting things I found in it. The book is entitled The Best, Worst and Most unusual, noteworthy achievements, events, feats & blunders of every conceivable kind.  By Bruce Felton and Mark Fowler, Galahad Books, 1994. I’m not going to do 26 chapters like I did with the alphabet but there are a few entries that I really wanted to look at and bring to all of your attentions. Today’s entry is extremely interesting and somewhat mysterious, I will share what the book has to say and then we will discuss it a bit. Here is the entry, it is under the title Worst Disease.

     The Fore tribe of New Guinea is afflicted by epidemics of kuru, a very rare disease characterized by trembling, dizziness, and a gradual decline into insanity.  At one stage of the illness, the victim is subject to fits of excessive laughter, and in fact kuru is sometimes referred to as “the laughing death”. As far as doctors have been able to ascertain, there is only one way that the slow virus that causes kuru to be transmitted from one person to another-by eating portions of infected brains. The Fore are one of the few tribes in New Guinea still practicing ritual cannibalism of their own dead.

I have done a little research into ritualistic cannibalism when it pertains to our ancient ancestors, such as Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon people. Many Neanderthal remains show signs of ritualistic cannibalism, especially the skull and arm bones. The skulls are carefully defleshed and the brains where then consumed, or so researchers figure. It is thought that it may have been a ritual to celebrate  a powerful or influential persons death. Eating the brains was supposed to give the eaters the eaten individuals powers, memories, etc. There were other reasons for cannibalism. Some tribes from around the world would eat their enemies after capturing them and of course people were forced to eat their own during horrible droughts, famine or other natural disasters. Cannibalism subsided throughout the Middle Ages and eventually feel out of favor in most civilized nations by the 1800’s although some Pacific Island tribes still practiced it well into the 21^st century and a few of the still isolated uncontacted tribes probably still practice ritual cannibalism to some extent to this day.

I should mention that the practice of cannibalism has been found on some Homo species from a million years ago or so. Where these ancient cousins of Homo Sapiens eating their dead out of necessity or was there some sort of ritual eating of certain parts of a dead individual? How and when did it start? Of course of animals in nature eat their own kind, chimpanzee males who take over a troop will often kill and eat all the infants not sired by him, to keep his blood line intact. Now here is where it gets interesting, here is where kuru makes the mysterious list. It has been shown that those tribes who actively ate other humans, especially the brains, would eventually be afflicted with kuru. Shamans were probably afflicted more than other members of the tribe and I would assume it was because they were the ones responsible for eating the brains of their dead. So then the Shaman gets stricken, turns mad and dies. After his death, imagine the whole tribe sitting around and sharing a skull full of his brains. Now the entire tribe is afflicted, and the cycle would continue.  I believe it was the movie, The Road, which even mentioned that the people who turned to eating other people during that time would show signs of being afflicted with kuru.  I would wager that if I were to research some other popular cannibalistic tribes or societies throughout history, that kuru would be mentioned at some point.  I would even consider that this cannibalistic tendency to eat the dead may have been an important religious practice for some of these tribes to pay the ultimate homage to their dead loved ones. Kuru probably came to them as an affliction from the Gods or a sign that their ancestors were present. For all we know, perhaps these ancient Shamans wanted to contract kuru as it connected them closer to their dead. I think of the diseases that strike other animals when they eat the infected brains of their dead, deer with chronic wasting disease and cow with Mad cow disease. It is obvious that eating infected or any brains over an amount of time can and will affect the individual or individuals doing the eating. 

My personal opinion is that kuru is the human version of Mad Cow or Chronic wasting and it is an evolutionary trait meant to keep us and animals from eating our brains. It is mind boggling to think that our brains may be wired to cause disease if eaten. Why?  The brain is the least none about organ in the human body and researchers know very little about how it really works. Its also possible that our bodies are not meant to eat the complex proteins and such in the human brain and that these diseases are a by product of putting that stuff in our systems. Whatever the reason I think it shows some sort of grand design, made on purpose in order to stop people from eating each other. Cannibalism is very taboo now a days as it should be, but the fact is it has a long and complicated place in our evolutionary history and diseases like kuru may have come about to keep us from continuing the nasty habit of eating our dead’s brains for knowledge, power or religious practice.

  Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the whole issue of cannibalism and our ancient ancestors. I do intend on researching this more heavily and when I do accomplish that I will happily share it amongst you all.

So do you think Kuru and diseases like that are an evolutionary caution against cannibalism? Do you think there may be certain proteins or such in the human brain that makes eating them pretty much toxic? A person could spend a life time researching this stuff! Ok, well, I am done for today. I hope you enjoyed this little article and I hope it gets you thinking. Have a pleasant day and a wonderful week and until the next time………PEACE!!!!!!!!!

Homer’s Vault of Mysteries: The Voynich Manuscript

An intriguing 15^th Century manuscript and my theory on its origins.

     The Voynich Manuscript is an illustrated handwritten codex in an unknown writing system that can be carbon dated to the early 15^th century, between 1404-1438. It was probably written in Northern Italy and is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912. There are around 240 pages remaining in the book and the text is written from left to right. Many of the pages have illustrations or diagrams. It has been studied buy codebreakers and cryptographers worldwide and there is still no definitive answer to what it could be. The illustrations vary from pictures of unidentifiable plants and weird scenes of women bathing. Some say it may be the book of an alien visitor while others think it was just a hoax perpetrated back in the 15^th century to fool people or the church. I don’t think someone would have put so much effort into a hoax just to piss the church off. If you pissed the church off back then, you were more likely to be tortured or even killed.

There are six different sections of the book and since the text is undecipherable. Each section is typified by illustrations with different styles and supposed subject matter except for the last section, in which the only drawings are small stars in the margins. There are a few missing pages. Here is a breakdown of the illustrations:

Herbal: 112 pages, none of these plants have ever been clearly identified.

Astronomical: 21 pages: contains circular diagrams suggestive of astronomy or astrology. One series of 12 diagrams depicts conventional symbols for the zodiac.

Biological: 20 pages: mostly pictures of nude women some wearing crowns and most seem to be bathing or wading in pools of water.

Cosmological: 13 pages: more circular diagrams but of an obscure nature. This section also has foldouts, one of which spans six pages. It contains a map or a diagram of nine islands or rosettes connected by causeways and containing castles.

Pharmaceutical: 34 pages: Many labeled drawings of isolated plant parts, objects resembling apothecary jars, ranging in style from the mundane to the fantastical.

Recipes: 22: Full pages of text broken into many short paragraphs, each marked with a star in the margins.

(Wikipedia, Voynich Manuscript)

That is what Wikipedia has to say about the book. There are hundreds of websites that you can peruse if you are more interested in the factual matters. The best source I found was the Yale University Library’s Rare Manuscript department (Beinecke Library), it comes up if you google the manuscript. I could literally write a whole book about this but today I am just going to give you a very brief description of what I think it is and how I came to this conclusion. I have researched this manuscript since I first heard about it about ten years ago and I have had a few theories, the most recent one and one that a few other people have thought as well is that it could be associated with dimensional travel since many of the circular images bare a striking resemblance to much of the hardware in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Perhaps this book was one of the dimensional travelers guide books, the text could be coordinates and the unknown flora from a different Earth all together. I suggest you watch the video CERN and The Voynich Manuscript on Youtube, made by my friend UNIROCK tv. Although this idea is extremely far fetched it isn’t that far beyond reason. My theory is this unfortunate dimensional traveler got stuck in our time and Earth and his book is the proof he wasn’t from our universe or dimension at all. I do like this theory but recently I have come up with one that makes much more sense and is feasibly possible.

My newest suggestion is that the book is actually an ancient spell book, perhaps it’s a druid’s spell book or some shaman from a totally unknown tribe or people. The words are all repetitive and the scenes of women bathing are ritualistic in nature, that would also explain the star charts and astrology in the book as well. Who knows maybe the book is thousands of years old and shows flora and fauna from somewhere that doesn’t exist anymore, like Atlantis or whatever may be buried under Antarctica, researchers recently found a petrified forest buried under the ice in Antarctica, which means at one time this frozen continent was teeming with life. A few researchers even suggest that Antarctica was actually way more north than it is now and that rapid continental shift plac3d it in the “frozen” zone in a matter of a couple hundred years somewhere around 10,000 years ago. Why couldn’t this be an ancient religious text from a lost civilization? Researcher are finding things everyday that retire our understanding of ancient history and it really bothers me that main stream academics can’t accept that the ancients may have been as smart if not smarter than us today. It isn’t hard for me to believe that thee ancient people who cared way more for the natural world than us could have used nature for their “magical” spells and healing. Perhaps the Voynich manuscript is a glimpse of an ancient civilization that disappeared millennia ago. That is the most fun part of doing this kind of research, the answers are shrouded in mist, yet it is so fun to stumble around looking for valid answers. I don’t know what this ancient book really is nor does anyone else and that’s what makes this so interesting. Do some of your own research and come to your own conclusions. I would love to hear what you all think. Like I said, I could write a whole book on this and perhaps someday I will but in the meantime, I wanted to share this fascinating story with you all and hope it sparks some interest to do your own research on this subject. The pictures alone are worth looking at.

I hope you enjoyed this little teaser of the Voynich Manuscript and I hope you look into it for yourself, it’s been fun and I can’t wait to share a ne mystery with you very soon. Until then have a wonderful day and as always, PEACE!!!!!!!

Obscure Mythology Chapter 26: Zya

A figure in Shamanism, Siberia.

     Here we are! The final chapter! After 26 entries and almost six months we have finally come to the end of this project! The last entry comes from the frozen lands of Siberia and was the third to the last entry in the Dictionary of Mythology. It was this dictionary that inspired me to find these 26 strange and awesome examples of great myths and legends from around the world. I also wanted to mention that Siberia has been a gold mine for archeologists studying ancient man as the frozen land has preserved many specimens of not just ancient man but ancient animals such as the woolly mammoth. In fact, there is one baby mammoth so well preserved scientists believe they could clone it! That controversy s for another post though!

I enjoyed this little endeavor a lot and can’t wait to do something like this again in the future. Speaking of the future, I have a lot of cool stuff to share, some that I have been working on since before I started this mythology project! Anyway, let’s get on with our finally entry in the Obscure Mythology project.

Zya, Siberian, a figure in shamanism.

It is said that if one draws the figure of an enemy on cloth or paper and hides it in that person’s house, he/she will fall ill and die.

Yikes! The first thing that came to mind my when I read this was an image of me frantically searching my house for crudely drawn pictures of me every time I came home from anywhere. I’ve made a few enemies in my time since I have no filter when it comes to things I truly believe in, so I would spend the extra ten minutes a day searching! Just try to imagine for one second that something like this actually worked, I don’t think I’d be the only one paranoid. I could see someone starting a business where they would place your enemy drawings for you for a small fee. It would be absolute chaos and kind of interesting. I may have to file this away for future short story ideas! When I first stated this blog I posted a story about Bone pointing, an Aboriginal shamanistic practice that “kills” someone with psychic energy, and in a way Zya may have worked the same way. If the tribe or society believed that it worked then chances are when an individual did find a picture of them drawn by their enemy in their own homes perhaps it did make them ill and eventually die because of the psychological effects of those beliefs. That’s what this whole project was about, finding obscure or forgotten mythology and not only sharing them but also finding the commonalities among them no matter where they came from or who first believed them.

In conclusion, this has been an awesome journey and I want to thank you all for sticking with me this long and I can’t wait to share new mysteries, myths, legends, etc with you all! Have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving (if you celebrate it) and as always….PEACE!!!!!