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    "headline": "Afar men in Ethiopia shape their hair into tight coils with butter and sticks, viral photos show",
    "description": "Afar men in Ethiopia traditionally set their hair into tight coils using butter and sticks, a style that went viral in a set of Reddit photos.",
    "datePublished": "2026-11-10T11:45:00+00:00",
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    "articleBody": "Rows of tight, even coils, each set by hand around a small stick and held in place with butter. That is the traditional hairstyle Afar men in Ethiopia have worn for generations, and a set of portraits shared on Reddit’s r/Damnthatsinteresting this week turned it into one of the most talked-about photo posts on the forum. The post’s caption credits the even coils to two tools: butter, and a rod that each lock is wound around. Commenters compared the look to hairstyles on ancient Egyptian statues and wall carvings, and many simply called the curls the most perfect they had seen. How the style is made According to a report on Afar culture, men shape and maintain the look with cow fat and butter. The curls are formed around sticks, and the butter helps them keep their shape for days while shielding the hair from strong sun. The same report names two traditional styles, the dayta and the asdago, and says the butter gives the asdago a slightly ashy finish while keeping the hair supple. The original poster added in the comments that butter does carry a smell, and suggested flaxseed is sometimes used now instead. One commenter who said they had worked alongside Afar people near Hadar wrote that goat butter and fat are still in use, and added that the Afar find Western hair products just as pungent. Butter styling is not unique to the Afar. The same report notes that the Karrayyu, a nomadic group in Ethiopia’s Awash Valley, also build elaborate looks with butter, and that among the Karrayyu girls use it too. Who the Afar are The Afar, also called the Danakil, are a Cushitic people of the Horn of Africa. They live mainly in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, in northern Djibouti and along Eritrea’s southern coast, and they speak Afar, a language of the East Cushitic branch. Their traditional lands are the only ones in the Horn of Africa that touch both the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The group numbers about 3.35 million people. Ethiopia accounts for roughly 2.7 million of them, Djibouti about 342,000 and Eritrea about 304,000. Put another way, about 81 percent of all Afar live in Ethiopia, since 2.7 million divided by 3.35 million comes to 0.81. Most Afar are livestock herders who raise camels, goats, sheep and cattle, and the Ethiopian Afar have long traded salt from the desert. Men traditionally carry the jile, a curved knife, and the culture has a large body of battle songs. A look noted for 700 years Afar hair has caught outsiders’ attention for centuries. The earliest written mention of the Afar comes from the 13th-century Andalusian writer Ibn Sa’id. Later, the royal chronicles of the Ethiopian Emperor Amda Seyon described Afar fighters whose plaited hair reached to their waists, a sharp contrast with the short, sculpted coils in this week’s photos. The viral images sit in a long line of interest in how people style hair, a subject Badiyaa follows in its Lifestyle section, alongside the stranger corners of the internet covered in Offbeat. The Afar language has its own ISO 639 code, and the Afar Region remains one of the nine ethnically based regions recognized by Ethiopia’s federal system. Further reading Wikipedia: Afar people Illustrative image. Image: Sebastian Morales, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
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