Cultural traditions are known across the world to run the gamut from fascinating, to peculiar and oft-times downright anti-humane. There was nothing charming about slavery, a common practise among societies considering themselves civil and socially advanced, and which now elicits the horror it deserves. No longer a symbol of agricultural wealth and social indolence achieved on the backs of slave labour, yet existing still in the illegal traffic of women, children and men as indentured slaves in the international commerce of sex and commercialized  slave labour.

The Crusades-era custom of shackling women's bodies in chastity belts to ensure that no man save her owner could rape her, the custom of crippling Chinese women by binding their feet as children so that throughout adulthood the attainment of the cherished goal of maimed feet in dainty satin slippers, childlike in appearance and critically hobbling to the female's ability to conduct a normal gait without pain, are both vestiges of bygone eras never to be repeated.

But female genital mutilation, honour killings and the honour attained and preserved in generations of clan-based revenge killings yet remain in tribal societies though they have entered more civilized enclaves, bringing their traditions with them.

Ancient civilizations, such as that of the great and fabled Chinese empire that arose at a time when European civilization was yet to emerge, pioneered medicinal drugs from natural resources whose applications had powerfully healing effects, yet existed alongside a tradition of more primitive 'magic' belief in the miraculous potency effects of the use of animal-based products to achieve results to turn nature on her illustrious ear.

And the harvesting of rare wildlife in which tradition has invested very special properties leading to virility and longevity, the cure of dread diseases, continues. Leading to the horrendous and criminal killing of exotic and rare wild animals threatened with extinction. International agreements to ban the culling of elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns represent the tip of the balance from thriving herds in protected natural preservation areas to poachers stealthily approaching conservation preserves to kill and to reap the benefits of the black market.

The exploitation of beasts' natural endowments to further the superstitious aspirations of segments of humankind represents a disgraced humanity. One where 'hunters' would kill a young white rhinoceros in a zoo near Paris to obtain its horn, priceless on the thriving black market, to feed an avaricious oriental market, and which has persuaded South Africa to draft legislation to overturn its long-time ban on the exportation of rhino horns, in a country where most rhinos still live.