Tattoo History

Tattoo is the act or practice of marking the skin with pictures, legends, etc, by making pictures in it and inserting pigments. Tattoo has been around for many years, it all started in 1991, at first it wasn’t used or view as symbolic but rather used to mark criminals or member is a religious group. In this generation, tattoo has become more popular among people especially adults and it has become more like a fashion.

My senior project was over the History of Tattooing, I chose this as my topic because Tattoos really interest me with all the different styles and meanings behind them. Some things I already knew about Tattooing is a lot of tribes used tattoos to symbolize things, but I didn’t know what.

Tattooing is not just a recent fad. Tattooing has been around for a very long time. "The current first proven incident of a tattoo dates back 4,000 years B.C. a traveler was found in Italy near Austria, preserved in the permafrost of a glacier. Carbon dating and arte facts found near him suggest that he is over 5,300 years old" (Tattoos and Design). Tattoos have been used

Adolf Loos wrote his piece, Ornament and Crime, about how the demand for ornamentation has declined over the years. He not only mentions that the demand for embellishment has decreased in time, but also how the quality of current embellishments have deteriorated. This passage is powerfully worded and is obviously a topic Loos feels strongly about. The ideas that struck me as interesting, and ones I will be discussing, are how he and society view tattoos, production of ornamentation, and the disappearance of ornament.

A study that was conveyed by Viren Swami communicates the satisfaction that people get after obtaining a tattoo. In the investigation of tattoos, it talks about the many diverse ingredients that go into determining how perky someone was with their presentation of themselves before they get a tattoo, and then their new reaction of themselves after receiving the tattoo. Many of the people that were used in the

To pass time by, the tattoo artist usually strikes a conversation with the customer. Mostly personal questions are asked, not as to get into their life, but

Tattoos have been around since 450 BC, it was used to mark the criminals and those fallen from social grace. But since then or since the Europeans discovered the “New World” and the tattooed tribes, its concepts has changed many times. You could classify the different changes in six eras in the tattoo history; the colonist or pioneer Era, the circus or carnival Era, the working-class era, the rebel era, the new age era and presently the supermarket era. The colonist or pioneer era was between the 1760s and 1870s is when the Europeans discovered tattoos amongst Native American tribes such as Hawaiians and Borneans whose tattoos had spiritual meaning, it was a way to protect themselves from physical harm and snakebite. But after their introduction with the Europeans

Tattoos have been around since 3,000 B.C. The oldest discovery of a tattooed mummy was the “Iceman”. The frozen body was discovered by hikers in 1991. The tattoos discovered on the body had no specific drawing there were just straight lines and small crosses. This led to believed that tattooing was used as a therapeutic to relieve pain. The Egyptians hold the true claim to fame regarding tattoos. It was common practice for Egyptian women of high status to received tattoos for the same sort of therapeutic reasons. “Tattooing of ancient Egyptian women had a therapeutic role and function as a permanent form of amulet during the very difficult time of pregnancy and birth” (Line berry 2).

The art of cultural tattooing is the art of marking skin with indelible patterns, pictures, or legends by making pricks in the skin and inserting colored ink. This art has been referred to as pricking, scarring, or standing. They use small instruments made of bone, cut into

Second Council of Nicaea banned all body markings as a pagan practice in A.D. 787 (Tattoos). The Maori people had hunted and decapitated each other for their moko tattoos. They used them for trade with Europeans. “Moko tattoos were facial designs worn to indicate lineage, social position, and status within the tribe” (Tattoos). Forensic pathologists mark burned, putrefied, or mutilated bodies.

The history of tattooing date back to the first man, Otzi, in 3300 B.C. who was found frozen in the Alps (Nat-A-Tat2) and the history piercing date back to different primitive tribes for their beliefs (Tribu). Scientists say that the tattoos he had were for medical reasons. When they found his body, they took X-rays and where there were tattoos was where his bones had started to decay. His tattoos were on his back, knees, ankles, and feet. The ink used on his tattoos was made of powdered charcoal and rubbing it into his cut skin. Many ancient civilizations did tattoos and piercings for example the Egyptians, Greeks, Japanese, Arabian and Siberians. Many mummies have been found with tattoos and are the oldest bodies to be found with gauged or stretched earlobes (Tibu). The Egyptians were also the ones who brought tattooing to Greece and to Arabia (Nat-A-Tat2). In Japan, tattoos were used for beauty, beliefs “and to mark criminals” (Nat-A-Tat2).

This is a documentary on the experience of two tattoo artists on the making of Tattooarte,

The following is the summary of chapter 12 of the book named Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History originally written by literature doctorate, Stephan Oettermann. The author is aimed to illustrate how the individuals get tattooed, entertained the people and displayed their life. Capturing, tattooing and displaying the savage individuals and having the voluntarily tattooed individuals had been the beginning of western tattooing in nineteen century. Being apart from a showman in performances, narrating biographies were one of the modes of display in the tattooed culture of the West.

Tattoos have been around forever. Otzi the iceman, who lived during 3,300 BC, is one of the most well preserved mummies to exist. After being discovered, scientists later learned he had sixty one tattoos. How is this possible if technology for tattoos didn’t exist for years to come.

Tattooing is defined as the process of making permanent designs to an individual’s body. The word tattoo is believed to have two etymological origins. The first derivation is from the Polynesian word ta, which is used for the sound when something strikes another thing (PBS). The second derivative is from the word tatau, which originated in Tahiti and it means marking something on the body (RUSH). The process of tattooing has been around for many years and there is contingent evidence of tools marking the beginning of tattooing in the Upper Paleolithic (RUSH). However the first human to be found with evidence of tattoos was a frozen corpse of a man, whom they call Otzi. According to Professor Rush, Otzi dates between the 5th and 4th millennium, and he was found to have small lines by