Tattoos - An Introduction

Tattoos are decorative body modifications consisting of permanent markings on the skin made by artificially inserting ink into the layers of the skin. This permanently changes the pigment of the skin. Tattoos are found in every culture throughout the world and some of the earliest practices of tattooing can be found on Otzi the Iceman who dates from the fourth to fifth millennium BC and was found in the Alps. In Japan, tatooing is believed to be an even older tradition, spanning back some ten thousand years. Some of the mummies of Ancient Egypt have been found to have tattoos as well.

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Tattoos are usually created by inserting pigment and dyes underneath the surface of the skin. There are various methods of doing this - the most basic is to rub a cut or wound with ashes. Once the wound heals, the skin that has scarred over the wound will be permanently dyed. In fact, wedding rings used to be made permanent by cutting a ring around the 3rd finger and rubbing black gunpowder into the wound, causing a permanent tattoo. This eventually gave rise to the tradition of wearing a ring on the finger.

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In the eighteenth century, explorers discovered the Polynesian practice of tatau which probably gave rise to tattooing in more modern western culture. European sailors were the first to take up the Polynesian practice and from there, it spread throughout Europe.

Tattoos were originally "hand-poked" - i.e. the ink was inserted under the skin using hand made needles that could be made of virtually any substance from bamboo to steel. Traditional Japanese tattooing is still done this way, as are criminal tattoos that are inked in prisons such as the tattoos of the Russian mafia.

Tattoos - An Introduction

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