The Origin of Bungee Jumping: From a Vanuatu Harvest Ritual to New Zealand's Extreme Sport
Tying something to your ankles and leaping from a great height is the same movement in Vanuatu and in New Zealand, but it has meant four very different things. On Pentecost Island, the naghol remains a living yam-harvest ritual and coming-of-age rite. In 1979, Oxford eccentrics turned it into a prank at Clifton Suspension Bridge. In 1987, AJ Hackett's illegal Eiffel Tower jump made it global news. By 1988, it was a ticketed industry at New Zealand's Kawarau Bridge. Here's how the same leap kept changing what it meant.
