When people think about the transition from a boy to a man, they might think of getting their license or going to college, however, this is not the case for all places on the globe.

Off the islands in the South Pacific, there is a ritual that is considered the “jump” from a child to a man.  If you’ve ever been bungee jumping, you are aware of how difficult it can be to actually jump from the ledge. Imagine jumping off of a 100-foot, hand-built, wooden tower with only vines attached to your feet and then plummeting to the ground at 45 miles per hour. This is the reality if you want to be considered a man in the small village of Vanuatu. These brave people take this plunge of faith to be welcomed into manhood. The slightest miscalculation of vine length could mean death.  The goal of the jump is to get close enough to the ground that your shoulders touch the dirt. If the vines aren’t the perfect length, the jumper could hit the ground too hard and risk serious injury or often times death. Boys in the tribe can take this leap as young as five years old. When the boys are that young, they don’t take the leap as high as the older boys, but they can work their way up to be considered manlier. The higher the jump, the manlier the man.

Another interesting ritual happens in Hamar. In order for a boy to become a man, he must perform a sacred ritual of cow jumping. This happens as a result of an engagement. When a boy in Hamar wants to marry a woman, he must become a man first. The women must also undergo a ritual when a boy wants to marry a girl.  The girls have to jump up and down in unison while being whipped by men until blood is drawn. This is done to simulate the pain the boys go through when they become men. Essentially, they are meant to suffer together. The boys, on the other hand, must go through a much different ritual. To start, the tribe gathers the four biggest bulls they have and the tribe lines them up. Next, the boy must hop onto the back of the first bull. After he is up on the bull, he then proceeds to run across the other bulls three times back and forth.  Once the boy is done, the tribe shouts “Maza!” and the boy is a man.

If you lived as a Spartan boy in the past, you would have to endure military training as a young boy starting at age 10. Once a boy turned 10, he was sent away from his family to train as a warrior. This training was some of the toughest training in the world. People would die regularly during training, because soldiers would have to fight to the death in order to progress in the program. Once a soldier turned 18 and was still alive, he was almost considered a man. As the final step in becoming a man, the boy had to travel to a local village with only his knife and kill as many state owned slaves as he could without being detected. If the boy killed as many slaves as he could, and returned in one piece, he is officially considered a man to all the people in his village. After his journey, he was expected to marry a woman and continue killing for his state.

Perhaps the worst of all these rituals is the last one. This ritual for a boy to become a man spawns from deep in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon from a tribe known as Satere-Mawe. If a boy wants to be a man, he must put both of his hands into woven gloves completely filled with bullet ants and withstand their stings for 10 minutes without making a sound. During this ordeal, the boy receives so much venom from the bullet ant stings that his arms are temporarily paralyzed and his body shakes for days uncontrollably. This isn’t a one-time deal either. The boys must do this several times before they are considered a man. The goal each time is to make the least sound possible. This rituals point out who the best warriors will be for the tribe.

All of these rituals consist of painful and dangerous procedures that could kill or injure someone seriously.  It seems that’s the point of these rituals though; in order to be a man in most cultures, you must prove you can overcome something dangerous and survive.  In America, we are lucky  that we don’t have to do anything similar to any of these rites of passage.