"The Nacirema were supposedly a tribe of people living in North America, as described by Horace Miner in his anthropological paper, published in 1956.
The tribe Miner described had many odd rituals including "scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument" and another ritual that "consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures."
It was actually a satire of everyday American life. "Nacirema" is "American" spelled backward."
read more via science.discovery.com
