Oetzi Iceman's Tattoos Came from FireplaceJennifer Viegas, Discovery News

July 17, 2009 -- The 57 tattoos sported by Oetzi, the 5300-year-old Tyrolean iceman mummy, were made from fireplace soot that contained glittering, colorful precious stone crystals, according to an upcoming study in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The determination supports prior research that the tattoos were associated with acupuncture treatments for chronic ailments suffered by the iceman, whose frozen body was found remarkably well preserved in the Similaun Glacier of the Alps in 1991. The findings also suggest how prehistoric people were tattooed in the days before commercial inks and electric tattooing machines. "I can imagine that they used some pointed material, maybe thorns, and dipped it into the soot and then pierced into the skin, or made scars and put the soot into the wound after insertion, allowing the wound to heal so that the colored material stayed there," lead author Maria Anna Pabst told Discovery News. Using optical microscopy and various powerful electron microscopy techniques, Pabst, a professor in the Institute of Cell Biology at the Medical University of Graz, and her colleagues analyzed several of Otzi's tattoos. Tattoos chosen for this study consist of line markings, as well as a distinctive cross-shaped tattoo on the iceman's right knee. Magnification of the skin designs revealed the tattoos consisted of soot, likely raked out of a fireplace, along with different silicate crystals, such as quartz and almandine, a type of purple garnet.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/17/iceman-tattoos.html?FORM=ZZNR2https://www.msu.edu/~krcmari1/individual/history.html

History of Tattooing Michigan State University

Ancient Romans found no reason to celebrate tattoos, believing in the purity of the human form. Except as brands for criminals and the condemned, tattoos were banned. But over time, the Roman attitudes toward tattoos changed. Fighting an army of Britons who wore their tattoos as badges of honor, some Romans came to admire their enemies' ferocity as well as the symbols that represented it. Soon Roman soldiers were wearing their own body marks; Roman doctors even perfected the art of application and removal.During the Crusades of the 11th and 12th centuries, warriors identified themselves with the mark of the Jerusalem cross so that they could be given a proper Christian burial if they died in battle.

By the early 18th century, European sailors encountered the inhabitants of the South and Central Pacific islands. There, tattoos were an important part of the culture. When a Tahitian girl reached the age of sexual maturity, her buttocks were tattooed black, a tradition that continues among some today. When in mourning, Hawaiians tattooed their tongues with three dots. In Borneo, natives tattooed an eye on the palm of their hands as a spiritual guide that would lead them to the next life.In 1769, Capt. James Cook landed in Tahiti, where the word "tattoo" originated from tatau, which means to tap the mark into the body. In New Zealand, Maori leaders signed treaties by drawing precise replicas of their moko, or personal facial tattoo. Such designs are still used to identify the wearer as a member of a certain family and to symbolize a person's achievements in life.In the 1820s, Europeans began the macabre practice of trading guns for tattooed heads of Maori warriors. To keep up with demand, Maori traders took slaves and commoners captured in battle, tattooed them, killed them, and sold their heads. The practice ended in 1831 when the British government made the importation of human heads illegal.Tattooing has been practiced in Japan—for beautification, magic, and to mark criminals—since around the 5th century B.C. Repressive laws gave rise to the exquisite Japanese designs known today. Restricted from wearing the ornate kimonos that adorned royalty and the elite, outraged merchants and the lower classes rebelled by wearing tattooed body suits. Covering their torsos with illustrations that began at the neck and extended to the elbow and above the knee, wearers hid the intricate designs beneath their clothing. Viewing the practice as subversive, the government outlawed tattoos in 1870 as it entered a new era of international relationships. As a result, tattooists went underground, where the art flourished as an expression of the wearer's inner longings and impulses. 

Tattoo: Pigments of Imagination The yakuza, the Japanese gangster class, embraced the body suits—even more so because they were illegal. Their elaborate designs usually represented an unresolved conflict and also included symbols of character traits the wearer wanted to emulate. A carp represented strength and perseverance. A lion stood for courage. Such tattoos required long periods of pain from the artist's bundles of needles, endured by wearers as a show of allegiance to their beliefs. Today, Japanese tattoo wearers are devoted to the most colorful, complete, and exotic expression of the art. New York inventor Samuel O'Reilly patented the first electric tattoo machine in 1891, making traditional tools a thing of the past in the West. By the end of the 1920s, American circuses employed more than 300 people with full-body tattoos who could earn an unprecedented $200 per week.For the next 50 years, tattoos gained a reputation as a mark of American fringe cultures, sailors, and World War II veterans. But today, tattoo connoisseurs take the spotlight at international fairs and conventions with Japanese body suits, Celtic symbols, black tribal motifs, and portraits of favorite celebrities. "Tattooing is enjoying a big renaissance around the world," says Chuck Eldridge of the Tattoo Archive in Berkeley, California. "Native American women in the Northwest are wearing chin tattoos again, reviving a cultural practice from centuries before the white man arrived. And, in answer to health concerns, artists in the South Pacific are slowly changing to modern equipment.""The melting pot that is the United States has no rites of passage as a single American culture," says Ken Brown, a tattoo artist in Fredericksburg, Virginia, who finds inspiration in National Geographic photographs (see "My Seven"). "On some levels, getting a tattoo is like a milestone that marks a certain moment in a person's life." Ken still remembers one customer, an 80-year-old former marine who had always wanted a tattoo but had been too afraid to get one. "He came to me for his first tattoo," Ken says, "and he told me, 'I figure I got five or six good years left in me, and I'm not going out without one.' "

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0412/online_extra.html

tribal

yakusa

BarbieHas one

1961: Hepatitis B makes the tattoo not cool again, an outbreak of which is linked to tattoo parlors in New York City. Parlors are outlawed in the Big Apple until 1997.2005: Popular culture helps tattoos become more popular in the West than at any time in recorded history, with more than 39 million North Americans sporting one. It all comes back to Austrian Ötzi and his 57 tattoos.

1790: Captain Cook returns from a voyage to the South Pacific with a unique souvenir: a tattooed Polynesian named Omai. He’s an overnight sensation in fad-crazy London and starts a tattooing trend among upper-class poseurs. Between passionate declarations that he is "not an animal" Omai also manages to introduce the word tattoo into our Western lexicon, from the Tahitian tatau, "to mark."1802: By now, tattooing has caught on with sailors throughout the Royal Navy, and there are tattoo artists in almost every British port. Especially popular are Crucifixion scenes, tattooed on the upper back to discourage flogging by pious superiors.1891: American Samuel O’Reilly "borrows" Edison’s electric pen design to patent a nearly identical machine that tattoos. Its basic design – moving coils, a tube, and a needle bar – is still used to today, so remember kids: That’s 19th-century technology they’re repeatedly stabbing you with.

3300 BCE: Ötzi the Iceman dies in the Austrian Alps, where his frozen body is discovered by hikers in 1991 CE, making him the world’s oldest mummy. His 57 tattoos – straight lines and small crosses, mostly – are believed to be therapeutic, possibly used to treat osteoarthritis.2800 BCE: The ancient Egyptians: Is there anything they can’t do? In addition to inventing writing, surgery, and beekeeping, they also popularize tattooing as an art form, which spreads from Greece toChina. (Oh, yeah – they invented the flushable toilet, too.)921 CE: Islamic scholar Ibn Fadlan meets Viking on a journey from Baghdad to Scandinavia and describes them as vulgar, dirty, and covered from neck to toe with tattoos.1600: Unlawful intercourse by Indian priests is punished by tattooing. Doesn’t sound so bad? Try having a big vagina branded on your forehead for life.1700: Obeying the letter of the law – if not the spirit – middle-class Japanese adorn themselves in full-body tattoos when a law is passed that only royals can wear ornate clothing.

Omai, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1776). Notice the tattooed arm and hand.

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/21/tattoo-timeline/

Robert Mitchum sporting "love/hate" knuckle tattoos in The Night of the Hunter.

1919: The troublemaker protagonist of Franz Kafka’s short story "In the Penal Colony" finally gets the law drilled into him – liiterally – by its fatal, 12-hour inscription into his skin1955: Robert Mitchum makes the tattoo cool again in the movie Night of the Hunter, playing a sociopathic traveling preacher with "love" and "hate" inked on his knuckles. Popular modern variants include "rock/roll" and "love/math."

Tattoo’s are an integral part of Polynesian culture, and Hawaiian culture is no exception In regards to the importance of tattoos.The process of tattooing was seen as an elaborate ritual that had to be respected.When compared to today’s methods of tattooing old style Hawaiian methods seem primitive and dangerous. Using tools such as bird beaks, claws and fish bones the process was often painful and brought with it, a high risk of infection.

The design of Hawaiian tattoos traditionally were usually geometric is design with use of curved lines, circles and “pointy” like designs. This style of tattooing has heavily influenced modern tattooing with a popular style currently known as “tribal” that is quite commonly seen of football players and fitness buffs.                                  After European influences

began the tattooing moved from abstract designs and began a more pictorial approach. Tattooing animals and objects onto themselves.

Hawaiian Tattooing

The sharp tool was dipped in a dye (made from burnt seed pods and

sugarcane juice giving the dye a black inky look) and run over the body while being gently hit by a stick causing it to pierce the skin and depositing the dye under the skin.The risk of getting a serious infection was usually dismissed as getting the tattoo was a very important part of the culture.

http://designhistory2008.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

Lawton Public Schools in no way endorses tattooing.