Encyclopedia of Taboos

The literal meaning of the word is simply ?marked off?, or ?off-limits?, possibly a combination of ta (to mark) and pu (exceedingly). Unfortunately, the term was interpreted by early anthropologists such as William Robertson Smith and James Frazer as a form of superstition, or magic, and became a repository for all that remained inexplicable in preliterate cultures. It took later scholars like Mary Douglas and Edmund Leach to show how taboos are just as prevalent in the industrialised West. Far from being remnants of a distant time or place, a product of supposedly ?primitive? thought, taboos are a crucial part of our, or indeed any, society, determining how people must and must not behave.