Tattoos through Time

The word tattoo is derived from the Tahitian tatau, which means to mark. This word was first used by the French navigator Bougainville to describe the body decoration of the Tahitian native in his book Voyage Autour Du Monde, 1766-69 (Fedorenko, Sherlock, and Stuhr 1).

Tattoo culture has been around for thousands of years, they served as different functions in ancient times such as decorative or medical purposes. The first decorative/cosmetic tattoo known is a thin pencil mustache tattooed on the upper lip of an adult South American male mummy in 6,000 B.C. for the purpose of making himself more appealing to his wife. Some circular tattoos were also found on a 1000-year-old female Peruvian mummy in South America.

There were two types of tattoos found on this mummy, however, they were attributed to different functions based on their tattooing materials. Researchers have shown that the more decorative tattoos on the body were made of soot, a form of black powder obtained from burning objects such as coal or wood, which is a common tattoo material in the ancient times. On the other hand, the circular tattoos behind the neck were made of partially burned plant material.

"Otzi the Iceman"

In 1991, a well preserved mummy was found on the mountain of Alps which is between Austria and Italy who lived around 3,300 BCE (5,300 years ago). This corpse revealed and proved the alternative function of tattooing. Otzi the Iceman bears a total of 57 tattoos on his body: a cross on inside of his left knee, straight lines above his kidneys, and parallel lines on his ankles; majority of them were lined up with Chinese acupuncture points, which suggests that there might be a medical practice similar to acupuncture 5,300 years ago.

"Anthropologists believe a traditional healer made incisions in Otzi’s skin on the afflicted areas, placing medicinal herbs in the wound which were burnede with the point of a heated metal instrument. The charred residue was incorporated in the resulting scar. An examination of Otzi’s tattooed skin tissue revealed that the scares to contain carbon particles. Probably a shepherd or hunter, he was middle aged at the time of his death (tattootemple.hk)."

sources:
http://www.decodingtheheavens.com/blog/post/2010/10/29/Mummy-tattoos.aspx
http://tattootemple.hk/history-of-tattooing
http://magazine.foxnews.com/style-beauty/origin-ink-tattoos-through-time