History of tattooing
Tattooing has been practiced across the globe since at least Neolithic times, as evidenced by mummified preserved skin, ancient art and the archaeological record. Both ancient art and archaeological finds of possible tattoo tools suggest tattooing was practiced by the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe. However, direct evidence for tattooing on mummified human skin extends only to the 4th millennium BCE. The oldest discovery of tattooed human skin to date is found on the body of Ötzi the Iceman, dating to between 3370 and 3100 BCE. Other tattooed mummies have been recovered from at least 49 archaeological sites, including locations in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Japan, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines and the Andes. These include Amunet, Priestess of the Goddess Hathor from ancient Egypt, multiple mummies from Siberia including the Pazyryk culture of Russia and from several cultures throughout Pre-Columbian South America.
Ancient practices
Preserved tattoos on ancient mummified human remains reveal that tattooing has been practiced throughout the world for millennia. In 2015, scientific re-assessment of the age of the two oldest known tattooed mummies identified Ötzi as the oldest example then known. This body, with 61 tattoos, was found embedded in glacial ice in the Alps, and was dated to 3250 BCE. In 2018, the oldest figurative tattoos in the world were discovered on two mummies from Egypt which are dated between 3351 and 3017 BCE. In the Americas, the oldest evidence of tattooing is a mustache-like dotted line above the upper lip of one of the Chinchorro mummies from Chile, dated to 2563–1972 cal BCE.File:Instruments for traditional Pacific Island tattoos.jpg|thumb|left|Hawaiian hafted tattoo instrument, mallet, and ink bowl, which are the characteristic instruments of traditional Austronesian tattooing culture
File:Visayans 1.png|thumb|180px|Spanish depiction of the tattoos of the Visayan Pintados of the Philippines in the Boxer Codex, one of the earliest depictions of native Austronesian tattoos by European explorers
Ancient tattooing was widely practiced among the Austronesian people. The distinctive Austronesian tattooing tools involving the perpendicular hafting of points and the use of a mallet were already in use by Pre-Austronesians in Taiwan and coastal South China prior to at least 1500 BCE, before the Austronesian expansion into the islands of the Indo-Pacific. It may have originally been associated with headhunting. Tattooing traditions, including facial tattooing, can be found among all Austronesian subgroups, including Taiwanese Aborigines, Islander Southeast Asians, Micronesians, Polynesians, and the Malagasy people. For the most part Austronesians used characteristic perpendicularly hafted tattooing points that were tapped on the handle with a length of wood to drive the tattooing points into the skin. The handle and mallet were generally made of wood while the points, either single, grouped or arranged to form a comb were made of Citrus thorns, fish bone, bone, teeth and turtle and oyster shells.
Ancient tattooing traditions have also been documented among Papuans and Melanesians, with their use of distinctive obsidian skin piercers. Some archeological sites with these implements are associated with the Austronesian migration into Papua New Guinea and Melanesia. But other sites are older than the Austronesian expansion, being dated to around 1650 to 2000 BCE, suggesting that there was a preexisting tattooing tradition in the region.
Among other ethnic groups, tattooing was also traditionally practiced among the Ainu people of Japan; some Austroasians of Indochina; Berber women of Tamazgha ; the Yoruba, Fulani and Hausa people of Nigeria; Native Americans of the Pre-Columbian Americas; the Welsh and Picts of Iron Age Britain; and Paleo-Balkan peoples, a tradition that has been preserved in the western Balkans by Albanians, Catholics in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and women of some Vlach communities.
Traditional practices by regions
The Americas
North America
have a long history of tattooing. Tattooing was not a simple marking on the skin: it was a process that highlighted cultural connections to Indigenous ways of knowing and viewing the world, as well as connections to family, society, and place.There is no way to determine the actual origin of tattooing for Indigenous people of North America. The oldest known physical evidence of tattooing in North America was made through the discovery of a frozen, mummified, Inuk female on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska who had tattoos on her skin. Through radiocarbon dating of the tissue, scientists estimated that the female came from the 16th century. Until recently, archeologists have not prioritized the classification of tattoo implements when excavating known historic sites. Recent review of materials found from the Mound Q excavation site point towards elements of tattoo bundles that are from pre-colonization times. Scholars explain that the recognition of tattoo implements is significant because it highlights the cultural importance of tattooing for Indigenous People.
Early explorers to North America made many ethnographic observations about the Indigenous people they met. Initially, they did not have a word for tattooing and instead described the skin modifications as "pounce, prick, list, mark, and raze" to "stamp, paint, burn, and embroider". In 1585–1586, Thomas Harriot, who was part of the Grenville Expedition, was responsible for making observations about Indigenous People of North America. In A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, Harriot recorded that some Indigenous people had their skin dyed and coloured. John White provided visual representations of Indigenous people in the form of drawings and paintings. Harriot and White also provided information highlighting specific markings seen on Indigenous chiefs during that time. In 1623, Gabriel Sagard was a missionary who described seeing men and women with tattoos on their skin.
The Jesuit Relations of 1652 describes tattooing among the Petun and the Neutrals, including a description of the process of using needles or thorns to perforate the skin, such as in the figure of an animal, and apply powdered charcoal to imprint an indelible image.
From 1712 to 1717, Joseph François Lafitau, another Jesuit missionary, recorded how Indigenous people were applying tattoos to their skin and developed healing strategies in tattooing the jawline to treat toothaches. Indigenous people had determined that certain nerves that were along the jawline connected to certain teeth, thus by tattooing those nerves, it would stop them from firing signals that led to toothaches. Some of these early ethnographic accounts questioned the actual practice of tattooing and hypothesized that it could make people sick due to unsanitary approaches.
Scholars explain that the study of Indigenous tattooing is relatively new as it was initially perceived as behaviour for societies outside of the norm. The process of colonization introduced new views of what acceptable behaviour included, leading to the near erasure of the tattoo tradition for many nations. However, through oral traditions, the information about tattoos and the actual practice of tattooing has persisted to present day.
St. Lawrence Iroquoians had used bones as tattooing needles. In addition, turkey bone tattooing tools were discovered at an ancient Fernvale, Tennessee site, dated back to 3500–1600 BCE.