The Mysterious History Of Tattoos!
The Mysterious History Of Tattoos!
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 are 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.
Ötzi, the European Tyrolean Iceman who died around 3250 BC holds the current record for oldest body art with a 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 changed their minds. While Ötzi has a lot of tats, they’re mostly lines and seem to have been intended to be medicinal. They cover parts of his body where he had joint and spinal problems. Two 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummies just a shade younger than Ötzi 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.
