while tattoos are commonplace in this
day and age they have a really strange
history full of violent stories famous
figures and freaky characters whether
you have tattoos or just interested in
them here's the bizarre history behind
the art just when the practice of
tattooing began is unclear because we
keep finding older and older mummies
with evidence of ink Bootsy the European
Tyrolean Iceman who died around 30 to 50
BC holds the current record for oldest
body art with whopping 61 tattoos all
over his body for a while there was an
argument that a South American mummy
with a pencil mustache tattoo was older
but then the experts change their minds
while Otzi has a lot of tats they're
mostly lines and seemed to have been
intended to be medicinal they cover
parts of his body where he had joined in
spinal problems - five thousand-year-old
Egyptian mummies just a shade younger
than you'd see have the first known
figurative tattoos we know the ancient
Greeks had tattoos as did the ancient
Chinese and importantly we know ink was
for both men and women a Siberian
princess who died 2,500 years ago has
very cool tattoos that are startlingly
similar to modern ones it's commonly
known the Jewish people aren't supposed
to get tattoos but the reason is less
than cut and dried one of the many laws
in Leviticus says quote you shall not
make gashes in your flesh for the dead
or in sighs any marks on yourselves
that's a translation from the Hebrew
obviously but you'll notice that its
meaning is open to interpretation
Harvard Divinity School explains that
there probably wasn't any real issue
with tattooing and Jews might have been
doing it before the ban however by
making the Manono Israelites were
distinguishing themselves as different
from people like the Babylonians and
Egyptians who did tattoo themselves
inkless skin was another way the early
Jews became their own group then the
Nazis added a whole other horrible level
to Jewish tattooing in concentration
camps
the Nazis forcibly inked identification
numbers on their prisoners which was a
violation of the bodily autonomy and
their religion so now Jews getting
tattoos is extra controversial that
doesn't mean they don't do it though
many young Jews get tattoos including
ones directly related to their religion
there aren't any real consequences to
getting tattoos if you're Jewish
as the idea you can't be buried in a
Jewish cemetery if you have body art is
false
even though Leviticus is included in the
Christian Bible the verse about not
getting tattoos was pretty much ignored
just like similar Jewish laws on eating
kosher according to the Catholic News
Agency that particular branch of
Christianity has never had a ban on body
art some later Christian churches
weren't the biggest tattoo fans but
there has never been a Christianity wide
ban quite the opposite is true in fact
in the Roman Empire before Christianity
was legal early believers would often
tattoo themselves with signs of their
faith
marking themselves permanently as
followers of Christ and ironically as
criminals in the Bible Paul says he
quote bears the marks of Jesus on his
body and while scholars think he was
being metaphorical it isn't certain
Christians kept up the body art even
once their religion was widely accepted
early historians talk about the practice
and popular design choices seem to have
been crosses and marks representing the
wounds of Jesus tribal ink has been an
important part of societies from
Polynesia to North America for thousands
of years in Samoa men would be tattooed
from the midriff to their knees this
involves today's long sessions with a
mallet and ink Laden cub the pain was
intense and there was a very real risk
of death from infection but any man who
couldn't hack it had an unfinished tat
and was shamed for life women also got
tattoos although there's tended to be a
bit smaller some Native American tribes
used a sharpened bone or rock to carve a
design into the skin the open wound was
then rubbed with soot or die which would
leave a stain men might get a tattoo to
represent a particular victory or for
spiritual reasons some tribes believe
tattoos could give them supernatural
powers and members got an image of an
animal they wanted to be like of course
then Christians came along and decided
that the practice must be stopped
Western missionaries who showed up in
Polynesia in the 1800s vilified
tattooing and the art form went into
decline forced tattooing has been around
pretty much as long as voluntary
tattooing in China tattoos were
considered a highly effective means of
punishment for most of recorded history
according to the journal of the american
oriental society if you broke the law
ink marked you as a criminal for life
and brought shame on you and your family
some point soldiers were also forcibly
tattooed so they wouldn't be able to
desert but this practice was highly
controversial slaves have also been
forcibly tattooed for millennia the
ancient Persians Greeks Romans Chinese
and Japanese all tattooed slaves to
discourage them from running away this
was why Christians in ancient Rome would
sometimes tattoo themselves voluntarily
preemptively marking themselves as
criminals and the slaves they would
become if their religion was found out
the practice of forced tattooing
continues shockingly
to this day in 1993 Indian police inked
Jeb Khatri Punjab II for pickpocket on
the foreheads of four women who were
habitual offenders this caused a huge
scandal and the cops received jail time
and in 2017 CNN reported on trafficked
women that were being marked with
tattoos meant to identify them as
property in the past criminals were
inked against their will but these days
the association between lawbreakers and
ink is just as strong people tend to
think of the tattooed especially the
heavily tattooed as bad guys this is so
ingrained that it actually affects the
outcome of trials according to the
Orlando Sentinel even though everyone
from celebrities to soccer moms have
tattoos these days there's still a
criminal association for some people and
sometimes those people end up on juries
so defense attorneys advise their
tattooed clients to cover up body art
with clothing or in extreme cases even
makeup a judge once ordered the state to
pay for a professional cosmetologist to
cover the swastika and barbed wire tats
of a man on trial for murder
once you end up in jail though tattoos
become a virtual rite of passage the
amateur ink that criminals get behind
bars is usually filled with meaning
whether it indicates their time inside
the crimes they committed or the prison
gang they belong to but do tattoos and
bad behavior actually have correlation a
2010 study out of Texas Tech University
was misreported as finding that the more
tattoos you had the more likely you were
to be deviant however according to the
study since so many people have tattoos
these days the correlation with deviant
behavior is extremely low high school
we all have our embarrassing longest in
the 1800s tattoos were modernized a bit
and became more common even society
women got tattoos that meant if he
wanted to stand out you had to get lots
of ink since this was also the heyday of
the circus and its sideshows this meant
the introduction of the heavily tattooed
freak
while some sideshows had tattooed men it
was a tattooed lady that really made
headlines according to vice the first
official tattooed lady was nora
Hildebrandt who worked briefly for
Barnum & Bailey before she was replaced
tattoos and female sexuality were
heavily intertwined in the public mind
time says that tattooed ladies often
perform striptease is to show off all
the ink in the beginning of the
phenomenon the women all had stories
about how they've been kidnapped in
tattooed against their wills but this
life fell out of fashion spectators
could buy photos of tattooed ladies to
take home as souvenirs while there was
definitely an exploitative side working
as a sideshow attraction was one of the
few ways women at the time could earn
their own money and have some kind of
independence these days lots of tattoos
can still get a woman noticed but the
ante has seriously been upped the most
tattooed woman in the world as of 2018
was a 69 year old from Florida named
Charlotte Guttenberg with 98 points 75
percent of her body covered in ink
however the record for most tattooed
person in the world is held by a man
named Lucky diamond-rich whose entire
body estat ood the history of the
nautical tattoos stretches back to at
least the 1500 s according to the naval
history and heritage command this was
exacerbated by the length and boring
nature of sea voyages sailors sent
around with nothing to do
so they took up tattooing each other to
pass the time it was a very amateurish
affair pink was made from gunpowder and
urine the Brits started the tradition
and it spread to America from there by
the late 1700s one third and one fifth
of their navies respectively had body
art during the American Civil War
sailors got tattoos to commemorate the
first battle between ironclad ships
participants in the spanish-american war
inked remember the Maine on their bodies
patriotic designs have always been
popular along with military insignia or
the names of loved ones some sailor
tattoos have specific meanings for exam
an anchor means you've crossed the
Atlantic while a pig and a rooster
tattooed on each foot is bizarrely
supposed to save you from drowning in a
shipwreck tattoos came into fashion in a
big way in the 1800s for a period rich
men and women even royalty absolutely
had to have body art it seems tattoos
got the Royal Seal of Approval in 1862
when the Prince of Wales the future
Edward the seventh visited Jerusalem and
got a tattoo to commemorate the trip in
1882 his sons the Duke of Clarence and
the Duke of York got tattoos in both
Japan and the Holy Land
none of these were tiny things either
but large works of art Russia's nicholas
ii georgia Fitz cousin got his own
dragon tattoo on his right forearm in
Japan in 1891 suddenly other wealthy
people wanted tattoos as well
aristocrats and wealthy men and women in
the UK and America jumped on the body
art bandwagon the stories are a bit hard
to believe one newspaper reported at the
end of the 1800s that three-quarters of
fashionable women in New York City had
inked there was a widely reported story
that Winston Churchill's mom got a snake
tattoo but if she did there's no
photographic evidence even today some
Royals such as Lady Amelia Windsor have
ink as popular as tattoos have been for
different types of people at different
times in history there's perhaps never
been a period for body art like the one
we're living in now that's because in
the late 1950s we entered what became
known as the tattoo Renaissance tattoo
artists really earned the artists part
of their name and completely changed the
tattoo landscape
it was obvious even at the time that
things were changing in a big way and
time covered the tattoo Renaissance back
in 1970 saying body art was the quote
vogue of the counterculture tattoos are
arguably more common and safer than ever
before parlors are heavily regulated and
many are basically as clean as hospitals
but getting a tattoo can still cause
problems from these slightly annoying to
the deadly CBS news reported on a 2015
study that found 10% of tattoo getting
in New York City had short-term
complications 6% of people suffered
significant problems including rashes
itching or swelling that stuck around
for more than four months
some people had these tattoo related
problems for years it was so bad that
the researcher admitted to being
surprised by her findings the best case
scenario when you have a bad tattoo
reaction is taking steroids however in
some cases it might be better to get the
tattoo lasered off there occasionally
reports about serious scarring or even
amputation close calls
according to paste in 2017 a Texas man
died when he swam in the Gulf of Mexico
just five days after getting a calf
tattoo the open wound got infected and
killed him when it comes to getting
tattoos aftercare is just as important
as where you go to get the ink check out
one of our newest videos right here plus
even more grunge videos about your
favorite stuff are coming soon subscribe
to our YouTube channel and hit the bell
so you don't miss a single one