What do former president Teddy Roosevelt
and rapper Lil Wayne have in common?
They both have gotten tatted up.
Surprised?
Don’t be.
Teddy isn’t the only historical figure to have had his body inked.
Winston Churchill,
George Orwell,
King Harold II
and even Republican congressman Barry Goldwater all had tats.
Granted, Roosevelt’s family crest chest piece is
more conservative than the assortment of tattoos Lil Wayne sports on his face.
However, it goes on to show that tattoos go beyond showing rebellion and status
— they’re also a form of artistic expression and remembrance.
The practice of tattooing goes back thousands of years.
The over 5,000-year-old mummified body of Otzi The Iceman
shows 61 permanent markings that are suspected to be the result of acupuncture treatment.
Now, that’s not to say tattoos originated from communities around the Ötztal Alps,
where Otzi was found,
or that all tattoos in ancient times were linked to medical procedures.
Many civilizations across history had different versions of body modifications
that involved inking skin,
and each of them attributed different meanings to the practice.
But we’ll get more into that later.
So, which civilizations practiced tattooing?
How did it spread?
And what did people use to get inked before the tattoo gun was invented?
Well, the answer to all these questions are coming up in this video,
where we dive into the history and origins of tattoos.
Otzi the Iceman has the world’s oldest preserved tattoos
but, as we were saying,
they didn’t seem to be done for artistic or religious reasons.
See, Otzi’s tattoos are simple, most of them just lines,
but they are placed in parts of the body that are easily exhausted
like the knees and lower back,
which suggests they may have been done for healing purposes.
According to a report published in the Journal of Archeological Science back in 2015,
the tattoos on Otzi were made by cutting the skin open
and rubbing charcoal in the wounds.
Before Otzi was confirmed as carrying the oldest preserved tattoos to date,
it was a mummy from the Chinchorro culture in South America
that was believed to hold that title.
The man was found in the region of Arica in Chile
and is believed to have been about 35 to 45 years old when he died
and lived in around 4000 BC.
His tat?
A series of black dots above his upper lip
that gave the appearance of a thin mustache.
The meaning of these markings remains a mystery,
as not all mummies recovered from the site had tattoos like his.
In 2016, tattoos on another mummy were found.
This time in Egypt.
According to the scientific journal, Nature, bioarchaeologist Anne Austin
of Stanford University in California was analyzing mummies in Cairo
when she noticed some markings on one of their necks.
She then used infrared tools to further examine the mummy
and found more than 30 tattoos.
The body had lotus blossoms on her hips,
baboons on her neck
and cows on her arm.
Scientists believe these pieces had religious significance
as the cows are related to the Egyptian goddess Hathor,
goddess of happiness, fertility, celebration, and love.
The oldest figurative tattoos were found in 2018 on the
bodies of two Egyptian mummies.
One of the bodies was male and the other female.
The male mummy has a wild bull and a Barbary sheep
while the woman has “S” shaped designs on her right shoulder
that could represent batons used in ritualistic dancing.
However, it wasn’t just Egyptians who were getting tatted up.
Ancient Chinese,
Britons,
Greeks and Romans
also practiced this form of body modification.
But the people most famously known for tattooing
were the Austronesian-speaking peoples.
These people live in Taiwan,
Southeast Asia,
Oceania,
Hawaii
and Madagascar.
Captain James Cook was one of the first outsiders
to see the tattoos placed on the Tahitians he encountered during his travels.
In fact, the word itself, “tattoo,”
comes from the Samoan word “tatau”
which means to hit or strike,
in reference to how these markings were placed on the skin.
Indigenous people from these areas developed
the earliest methods of tattooing using a makeshift mallet
along with sharp needle-like objects
to inject ink under the skin
such as thorns,
fish bones,
oyster shells
and human bones.
The ink was made of a mix of a dark liquid,
like charcoal or soot,
combined with another liquid like sugarcane juice
to give it a shiny finish.
Although ancient,
these methods are still being kept alive
by some communities around the world.
Meet Whang-Od.
She is 102 years old and she’s the last mambabatok
— the last tattoo artist of the Philippine Kalinga ethnic group
who practices traditional tattooing techniques.
Whang-Od has been tattooing since she was 15 years old.
Using a mallet from a coffee or bamboo tree and thorns from
pomelo, calamansi or lemon trees,.
Whang-Od taps away into her canvas’s skin,
creating motifs representing strength,
protection,
health,
among many other meanings.
Before their tattoos became popular,
only Butbut men who brought back the severed heads of
enemy warriors that threatened their village
would get tattoos as a reward for their bravery.
Whang-Od doesn’t want this tradition to die with her,
and although she didn’t have children of her own,
she has been mentoring her grandniece, Grace Palicas,
teaching her the thousand-year-old technique of Kalinga tattooing.
Nowadays, travelers visit Whang-Od in the northern Philippines
in the hopes of having a chance of getting one of her famous tattoos.
Thankfully, today, you don’t need to present a
severed head at your tattoo parlor to get inked.
You also have a wide variety of styles to pick from.
Let’s go through the most popular ones:
We have the traditional style
sported by sailors and the early pioneers of tattooing in America,
featuring strong lines and motifs
like anchors, roses and beautiful women.
Then there are tribal tattoos,
which as the name suggests,
are inspired by the tribal markings of indigenous people around the world.
Traditional Japanese tattoos are intricate
and oftentimes pay homage to mythological characters
and legends of Japanese folklore.
Chicano style tattoos carry a heavy message
as they originated from incarcerated Hispanic communities
in 1940s America
and they served as a way to depict scenes of gang life
and the Catholic religious figures the gangs prayed to.
And finally, we have the classic realism tattoos,
used mainly for portraits of those who their loved ones
want to remember.
Newer styles like watercolor,
neo-traditional,
and new school were born and evolved from the previous styles we mentioned.
So far, we’ve learned about ancient tattoo techniques,
inks,
and modern styles.
So let’s get into the science behind it all.
What makes tattoos permanent?
Time for a… not-so-Express Explore Explanation!
Start the clock!
To understand why tattoos last for such a long time,
we need to understand tattooing tools.
The first electric tattoo machine was patented on December 8, 1891 by Samuel F. O’Reilly.
O’Reilly was a tattoo artist and he realized that the technology
used in Thomas Edison’s autographic printing pen
could be altered to create a machine that introduced ink to the dermis of his canvases.
O’Reilly’s tattoo machine used a rotary motor
to move the needles up and down in a consistent motion,
making it easier for artists to draw on their canvases.
On August 23, 1904,
another type of tattoo machine was patented by another tattoo artist in New York
named Charles Wagner,
only his was powered by a coil motor.
Needles are attached to a metal bar
which is connected to dual electromagnetic coils.
Which makes needles bounce back and forth by completing and breaking an electromagnetic circuit.
These types of machines are the most common ones used nowadays,
although not the only ones.
In the case of both machines,
the needles are loaded with ink
and with every pulse of the machine,
inject the dye into your dermis,
the layer of skin just below the epidermis.
Your body’s initial reaction, of course,
is to get rid of the pain and the invading pigment particles that shouldn’t be there.
Immune system cells rush to the area
and start eating up the ink particles.
Some of them are broken down in your lymph nodes.
However, larger particles that can’t be processed by your cells just stay there,
suspended in that layer of your skin.
Of course, as the ink particles break down,
they become easier to absorb by your cells,
causing the tattoo to fade a bit as the years go by.
But although tattoo practices have been around for thousands of years now,
the technology around it continues to evolve.
Have you ever heard of Soundwave Tattoos?
Nate Siggard, co-owner of tattoo tech-company Skin Motion,
developed an app that would read soundwaves from a tattoo
already placed on a canvas’s skin.
Making tattoos that essentially, speak.
Here’s how it works:
the customer uploads the audio recording they would like to get tattooed into the Skin Motion website,
where they can then transform it into a tattooable audio wave.
Then the customer looks for an artist near them trained in inking Soundwave Tattoos
— which they can find in Skin Motion’s online directory—
and set up an appointment.
Once the tattoo is on the canvas,
they just have to scan it with Skin Motion’s app and it
plays back the voice of their loved one back to them.
Scanned tattoo audio: "Mom, I love you to the moon and back."
DISCLAIMER: We are not being sponsored by Skin Motion,
still it’s a pretty cool thing that they’re doing.
Apart from the evolution in its artistry,
tattooing has also inspired the medical field.
In June of 2019,
engineers from the University of Texas at Austin
developed a wearable device that measures the
biometric data of its users.
They are calling it an e-tattoo.
The stretchy device is placed over the heart of a patient
where it silently takes electrocardiograph and seismocardiograph readings for days, uninterrupted.
Technology like this could potentially help individuals
with heart problems detect unhealthy cardiovascular activity
and prevent fatal diseases.
Throughout history,
this ancient practice has both represented separation,
violence and pain,
just as it has been used to portray remembrance
and honor.
Regardless, it’s quite fascinating to see a practice
this old continue to evolve alongside us humans.
What about you?
Would you like to get tattooed?
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