Tattoo | Body Art, Cultural Significance & Design (2024)

tattoo, permanent mark or design made on the body by the introduction of pigment through ruptures in the skin. Sometimes the term is also loosely applied to the inducement of scars (cicatrization). Tattooing proper has been practiced in most parts of the world, though it is rare among populations with the darkest skin colour and absent from most of China (at least in recent centuries). Tattooed designs are thought by various peoples to provide magical protection against sickness or misfortune, or they serve to identify the wearer’s rank, status, or membership in a group. Decoration is perhaps the most common motive for tattooing.

If certain marks on the skin of the Iceman, a mummified human body dating from about 3300 bce, are tattoos, then they represent the earliest known evidence of the practice. Tattoos have also been found on Egyptian and Nubian mummies dating from approximately 2000 bce. Their use is mentioned by Classical authors in relation to the Thracians, Greeks, Gauls, ancient Germans, and ancient Britons. The Romans tattooed criminals and slaves. After the advent of Christianity, tattooing was forbidden in Europe, but it persisted in the Middle East and in other parts of the world.

In the Americas, many Indians customarily tattooed the body or the face or both. The usual technique was simple pricking, but some California tribes introduced colour into scratches, and many tribes of the Arctic and Subarctic, most Eskimos (Inuit), and some peoples of eastern Siberia made needle punctures through which a thread coated with pigment (usually soot) was drawn underneath the skin. In Polynesia, Micronesia, and parts of Malaysia, pigment was pricked into the skin by tapping on an implement shaped like a miniature rake. In moko, a type of Maori tattooing from New Zealand, shallow coloured grooves in complex curvilinear designs were produced on the face by striking a miniature bone adze into the skin. In Japan, needles set in a wooden handle are used to tattoo very elaborate multicoloured designs, in many cases covering much of the body. Burmese tattooing is done with a brass penlike implement with a slit point and a weight on the upper end. Sometimes pigment is rubbed into knife slashes (e.g., in Tunisia and among the Ainu of Japan and the Igbo of Nigeria), or the skin is punctured with thorns (Pima Indians of Arizona and Senoi of Malaya).

Tattooing was rediscovered by Europeans when the age of exploration brought them into contact with American Indians and Polynesians. The word tattoo itself was introduced into English and other European languages from Tahiti, where it was first recorded by James Cook’s expedition in 1769. Tattooed Indians and Polynesians—and, later, Europeans tattooed abroad—attracted much interest at exhibits, fairs, and circuses in Europe and the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Stimulated by Polynesian and Japanese examples, tattooing “parlours,” where specialized “professors” applied designs on European and American sailors, sprang up in port cities all over the world. The first electric tattooing implement was patented in the United States in 1891. The United States became a centre of influence in tattoo designs, especially with the spread of U.S. tattooers’ pattern sheets. The nautical, military, patriotic, romantic, and religious motifs are now similar in style and subject matter throughout the world; characteristic national styles of the early 20th century have generally disappeared.

In the 19th century, released U.S. convicts and British army deserters were identified by tattoos, and later the inmates of Siberian prisons and Nazi concentration camps were similarly marked. During the late 19th century, tattooing had a short vogue among both sexes in the English upper classes. Members of gangs frequently have identified themselves with a tattooed design. Tattooing has declined in many non-Western cultures, but European, American, and Japanese tattooing underwent a renewal of interest in the 1990s. Tattooing of both men and women became fashionable, along with a revival of body piercing.

There are sometimes religious objections to the practice (“You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you” [Leviticus 19:28]). The health risks of tattooing include allergic reaction to pigments and, when tattoos are applied under less-than-sterile conditions, the spread of viral infections such as hepatitis and HIV.

Methods of tattoo removal include dermabrasion, skin grafts or plastic surgery, and laser surgery. All such methods may leave scars. In the early 2000s a group of scientists developed inks made from nontoxic pigments that could be contained within nano-beads. These nano-beads, implanted in the skin using traditional tattooing methods, created a permanent tattoo if left alone. The tattoo was removable, however, by means of a single laser treatment that would rupture the nano-beads; the inks thus released were absorbed into the body, and the laser treatment itself left no scar.