thinking of getting a tattoo decorating
your birthday suit would add another
personal story to a history of tattoos
stretching back at least 8,000 years
tattooed mummies from around the world
attest to the universality of body
modification across the millennia and to
the fact that you really were stuck with
it forever if your civilization never
got around to inventing laser removal a
mummy from the Chinchorro culture in
pre-incan Peru has a moustache tattooed
on his upper lip
Otzi mummified ice men of the Alps has
powdered charcoal tats along his spine
behind his knee and around his ankles
which might be from an early sort of
acupuncture the mummy of a Manette a
priestess and Middle Kingdom Egypt
features tattoos thought to symbolize
sexuality and fertility even older than
the mummies figurines of seemingly
tattooed people and tools possibly used
for tattooing date back tens of
thousands of years tattoos don't have
one historical origin point that we know
of but why do we English speakers call
them all tattoos the word is an
Anglophone ik modification of tatau a
Polynesian word used in Tahiti where
English Captain James Cook landed in
1769 and encountered heavily tattooed
men and women stories of kooks findings
and the tattoos his crew acquired
cemented our usage of tattoo over
previous words like scarring painting
and staining and sparked a craze in
Victorian English high society we might
think of Victorians having Victorian
attitudes about such a risque thing and
you can find such sentiments and even
bans on tattooing throughout history but
while publicly some Brits looked down
their noses at tattoos behind closed
doors and away from their noses lots of
people had them reputedly Queen Victoria
had a tiger fighting a Python and
tattoos became very popular among cooks
fellow soldiers who used them to note
their travels you cross the Atlantic get
an anchor pin south of the Equator time
for your turtle tat but Westerners
sported tattoos long before meeting the
Samoans and Maori of the South Pacific
Crusaders got the Jerusalem cross so if
they died in battle they'd get a
Christian burial
Roman soldiers on
Adrienne's wall had military tattoos and
called the pics beyond it pics for the
pictures painted on them there's also a
long tradition of people being tattooed
unwillingly Greeks and Romans tattooed
slaves and mercenaries to discourage
escape and desertion criminals in Japan
were tattooed as such as far back as the
7th century most infamously the Nazis
tattooed numbers on the chests or arms
of Jews and other prisoners at the
Auschwitz concentration camp in order to
identify stripped corpses but tattoos
forced on prisoners and outcasts can be
redefined as people take ownership of
that status or history Primo Levi
survived Auschwitz and wore short
sleeves to Germany after the war to
remind people of the crime his number
represented today some Holocaust
survivors descendants have their
relatives numbers tattooed on their arms
the Torah has rules against tattoos but
what if you want to make indelible what
you feel should never be forgotten and
those criminals and outcasts of Japan
where tattooing was eventually outlawed
from the mid 19th century to just after
World War two added decoration to their
penal tattoos with designs borrowed from
woodblock prints popular literature and
mythical spiritual iconography Yakuza
gangs viewed their outsider tattoos as
signs of lifelong loyalty and courage
after all they lasted forever and it
really hurt to get them for the Maori
whose tattoos were an accepted
mainstream tradition
if you've shied away from the
excruciatingly chiseling in of your moko
design your unfinished tattoo marked
your cowardice today unless you go the
traditional route your tattoo artist
will probably use a tattoo machine based
on the one patented by Samuel O'Reilly
in 1891 itself based on Thomas Edison
stencil machine from 1876
but with the incredibly broad history of
tattoos giving you so many options what
are you going to get this is a bold
lined expression of who you are or who
you want to appear to be as the
naturalist aboard cooks ship said of the
town Tahitians everyone is marked thus
in different parts of his body according
maybe to his humor or different
circumstances of his life maybe your
particular humor and circumstances
suggest getting a symbol of cultural
heritage a sign of spirituality sexual
energy or good old-fashioned avant-garde
defiance a reminder of a great
accomplishment or of how you think it'd
look cool of Hulk Hogan wrote a rhino
it's your expression your body so it's
your call
just two rules you have to find a
tattooist who won't be ashamed to draw
your idea and when in doubt you can
never go wrong with mom