The Missippians site we visited was the city of Cahokia, which was a city of 20k people around 1000 CE, and the city was abandoned around 1300 CE. The Monks Mound referred to in the video is a 100 foot high mound, which overlooks the city as the spiritual center.

Lt. James Cook encountered the Maori for the first time on October 8, 1769- most of the illustrations of the Maori were from the 1800s, which was also a time period in which they were hunted for their tattooed skin.

So its been a while since our last podcast… life has changed quite a bit since February, and in this episode we discuss a bit about where we’ve been the last few months, what we’ve been up to, and what is going on with us and the pandemic situation. We discuss body sovereignty— the need to be able to control your physical form and the idea of the “Other,” in relation to how we were able to get back to work. Its a bit of a noisy episode, because we recorded it on the fly, so please forgive the background noise.

Show Notes:

John Locke Second Treatise of Government, 1689

BodyRights.org

Jae and T: Becoming Fully Human on Youtube (our Homesteading/Farming/Returning to the ways of our Ancestors Vlog)

Welcome to Episode 5!! We discuss a bit about why we had such a long hiatus (health issues) and talk a bit more about why body modification is such an important part of returning to our roots and exploring traditional ways of being Human. This one is a bit of a wandering conversation, and we discuss agriculture and health as well, but it does all tie together in that we think that people are starting to realize that the ways we are living in contemporary society are more detrimental than helpful…. tattooing is one of the many things that people are starting to look at in a different and more traditional (pre-industrial) light and it goes right along with returning to traditional agricultural practices, spirituality, and community. We hope you all enjoy the episode… If you like the show, please subscribe, and if you can, leave a review! We appreciate all of your support!

Show Notes:

BMEzine

Modern Primitives: An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual, V. Vale, Andrea Juno, May 1st 1989

Welcome to Episode 4! In this episode we discuss why it is important to understand the history of tattoo and other body modification practices, the science relating to why we might do such things to ourselves and our offspring and how we, as modern body modification practitioners and participants are missing out on the benefits of these practices. This is a bit of a rambling conversation and we do cover a broad spectrum of thoughts and topics. There is more foul language in this one, so make sure to be aware of who is around when you’re listening… probably NSFW or around kiddos.

Thank you for your continued support! Please let us know if you have any feedback (positive or otherwise). We appreciate that you take the time out of your day to listen to us ramble about something we are so passionate about!

Show notes:

Delio, Michelle, Tattoo: The Exotic Art of Skin Decoration, 1994.

Stevens, John, “Tattooed Buddha,” Yoga Journal, March/April 1992

Garve R. Garve M. Türp J. C. Fobil J. N. Meyer C. G. (2017). Scarification in sub‐Saharan Africa: Social skin, remedy and medical import.Tropical Medicine & International Health, 22(6), 708–715. 10.1111/tmi.1287828380287

Welcome to Episode 3! It took us a bit longer to get this out than we would have liked, but the holidays definitely messed up our schedule and there is a lot of research we wanted to get together to share during the episode and to put in the show notes. We appreciate your patience!!

In this episode we discuss the biological reason that we might, as human animals, be inclined to put ourselves and our offspring through painful ordeals. We ponder what exactly the benefits of such experience might be and also why we continue to do so today.

We thank everyone for their continued support! Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll see as soon as we post a new podcast! We really appreciate the feedback we have gotten so far, so please let us know if there is anything we can do to improve the podcast, or if there is anything that you are loving about what we’re doing. If you have any questions or comments, you can always email us at [email protected].

Reference Notes:

Bastian, Brock, Jolanda Jetten, and Fabio Fasoli. "Cleansing the Soul by Hurting the Flesh." Psychological Science 22.3 (2011): 334-335.

Bastian, Brock, Jolanda Jetten, and Laura J. Ferris. "Pain as Social Glue." Psychological Science 25.11 (2014): 2079-2085.

Bergland, Christopher. “New Clues on Rewiring Your Brain.” Psychology Today March 28, 2012, www. Psychology today.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201203/new-clues-rewiring-your-brain

Craig, A.D. “A New View of Pain as a Homeostatic Emotion.” Trends in Neurosciences 26 (2003): 303-307.

Day, Melissa A, Charles LWard, M DawnEhde, E BeverlyThorn, John Burns, Amanda Barnier, B JasonMattingley, and P MarkJensen. "A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Mindfulness Meditation, Cognitive Therapy, and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Chronic Low Back Pain." Pain Medicine Advance Article (2019).

Fischer, Ronald, and Dimitris Xygalatas. "Extreme Rituals as Social Technologies." Journal of Cognition and Culture 14.5 (2014): 345-355.

Gapp, Katharina, Ali Jawaid, Peter Sarkies, Johannes Bohacek, Pawel Pelczar, Julien Prados, Laurent Farinelli, Eric Miska, and Isabelle M Mansuy. "Implication of sperm RNAs in transgenerational inheritance of the effects of early trauma in mice." Nature Neuroscience 17.5 (2014): 667-669.

Henrich, Joseph. "The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion." Evolution and Human Behavior 30.4 (2009): 244-260

Hughes, Virginia. "Sperm RNA carries marks of trauma." Nature 508.7496 (2014): 296-297.

Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Raw and the Cooked. Introduction to a Science of Mythology. Volume I., (1969).

Stein, Murray B., Laura Campbell‐Sills, and Joel Gelernter. "Genetic variation in 5HTTLPR is associated with emotional resilience." American Journal of Medical Genetics part B 150B.7 (2009): 900-906.

Tatta, Dr. Joe. “How the Brain Creates Pain— and How to Stop It.” Integrative Pain Science Institute Blog. www.integrativepainscienceinstitute.com/brain-create-pain-stop

Turner, Victor, “Body, Brain, and Culture” Zygon Journal of Religion and Science. Volume 18, issue 3, Sept 1983, p.221-245.

Vågerö, Denny, and Kristiina Rajaleid. "Does childhood trauma influence offspring’s birth characteristics?." International Journal of Epidemiology 46.1 (2017).

Welcome to Episode 2! It’s a bit later than we expected to be putting it out, due to a few technical issues, but here we are, with more banter for your listening pleasure. This week we’ll talk about why humans modify their bodies, from an anthropological perspective, talk some Euro-American tattoo history and how modern modification falls into the same categories that pre-colonial/pre-industrial modifications fall into.

Some notes from stuff discussed on the episode:

Ötzi’, the Iceman- This mummy preserved in the Alps lived 5300 years ago, according to researchers. I mis-spoke, most of his tattoos seem to medically related, mostly being sets of lines (2-4 per grouping), located over areas that he may have had medical issues, and 2 that resemble plus signs that were on joints or places that we associate with acupuncture points.- here’s a link to an interesting article about it: https://www.livescience.com/49611-otzi-iceman-mummy-tattoos.html

The Siberian Princess, or Princess of Ukok is about 2500 years old, roughly buried in 500 BCE.

Here’s a link to an article which shows the 8 oldest tattoos in the world and where they are from: http://www.oldest.org/artliterature/tattoos/

Books referred to in the episode:

Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, Mary Douglas, 1970

Modern Primitives, David Levi Strauss, found in Modern Primatives: Tattoo, Piercing, Scarification- An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment & Ritual, by V. Vale and Andrea Juno, 1989

In this first episode, we introduce ourselves, talk a bit about our backgrounds and discuss what we mean by Body Modification, from an anthropological perspective.

Referenced in this episode:

Victoria Ebin, The Body Decorated, 1979

Olivia Vlahos, Body, the Ultimate Symbol, 1980