The Ancestor of the Bungee Jump

Naghol is performed each year in the southern villages of Pentecost Island, Vanuatu, timed to the yam harvest between roughly April and June, when the vines used for the diver's cords are held to be at their most supple and least likely to snap under load, a practical botanical judgment embedded in a ritual calendar. Wooden towers up to thirty metres high are built fresh each season from local timber and lashed vine, engineered by measurement of each diver's height and the vine's particular give so that his head or shoulders brush the loosened earth at the platform's base rather than strike it, a margin the builders calculate rather than leave to chance.

The custom is best known internationally as the acknowledged inspiration, filtered through much later commercial adaptation, for modern bungee jumping, a connection Vanuatu's own tourism promotion actively makes, though the two practices share only the basic physical principle and differ entirely in meaning and material. Naghol is understood locally as a rite securing a good yam harvest and demonstrating a diver's courage and standing, performed by men and boys of varying ages according to local custom, with the youngest typically diving from the lowest platforms and the most senior, most experienced divers from the tower's top.