Pasola is a harvest festival in the Indonesian Island of Sumba in which two villages face-off on horseback. The shamans determine the date of the Pasola based on the annual appearance of the nyale seaworms. Once the shamans have retrieved the nyale worms from the ocean at dawn, the Pasola begins. The men charge each other at full gallop, whirling spears with intent to kill. Noses are broken, skulls fractured, and sometimes even death occurs. But that is the whole point. The more blood that is shed, the better the harvest is supposed to be. Without a blood sacrifice, the rice cannot grow, just as it cannot grow without water or sunlight. It is a fertility ceremony in theory and a human sacrifice in premise.

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