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The Evolution Of Tattoos Essay

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The Evolution of Tattoos They’re what you see on your friends, family and people walking on the streets. This growing debate on tattoos brings me to the point of the evolution of tattoos. Tattoos were once believed to be a risky trend and are now becoming more of the norm. As we know it tattoos are not as unusual as they once were. There are many different reasons behind why people get tattoos, for example personal losses, symbolism, or just the concept of it being art. Most believe tattooing is just another medium of art and it should be respected along with the tattoo artist who give them. A lot of people differ in opinion behind what, where, and how people should get their tattoos. A strong topic to think about is what to get as a …show more content…

So tattoos were used in a symbolic manner. As seen on television, movies about old Egyptian times embrace their characters with tattoos all over their bodies. But it seems as if in reality old Egyptians used tattoos as rituals for the gods to help them get something they wanted. The word “tattoo” comes from the Polynesian word ‘ta’ which means ‘to strike something’ and the Tahitian word ‘tatau’ which means ‘to mark something’(DBoom). Both ways of saying it make sence and still do explain how modern day tattoos are done. In 1991 a mummie called “Otzi the Ice Man” was found in a mountain range between Italy and Austria, this mummie had to be 5000 years old. The mummie consisted of 57 tattoos around the knees, kidneys, and the ankles. All the tattoos were either vertical or parallel lines and most likely had to do with therapeutic reasons. The supposed reasoning behind the tattoos were some sort of treatment for arthritis. Compared to now and the past, the past usage for tattoos usually had to do with some symbolic reasoning. The Scythians were an ancient people whose graves were found in the Altai mountains of Southern Siberia. The graves were made of solid ice so the corpses were preserved very well (MSU). These corpses had tattoos on them of totems and game animals. These tattoos were symbolic because the game animals let us know that the Scythians liked to hunt. During the late 1700’s

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