Tattoo History

In 3000 B.C. during the Late Stone Age, a man around the age of 45 or 46 died while walking near the present-day border between Austria and Italy. He lived to the south of the Alps near Lake Garda, in what is now known as northern Italy. This ancient man is called Ice Man, and he has some of the earliest known tattoos. Ice Man has tattoos of stripes and crosses in “strategic locations on the body” (Othmar), such as his calves. While his tattoos are invisible to the naked eye, using infrared photography, it was discovered that Ice man had 57 stripes in 16 groups along with both a large and a small cross-like mark in different places on his body where physical stress might cause him pain (Othmar).
Throughout history, references to permanent markings have appeared. They have been discovered on the bodies of people who lived thousands of years before our time. There have been figurines decorated with what were probably the tattoos of the time, and tattoos are all around us in present day. Although tattoos have been around almost since the beginning of human history, the way they have been used and whether tattoos were seen in a positive light or a negative light has changed with each culture.
In ancient cultures, the people believed that tattoos had magical significance or healing powers. Kitamura mentions one historical book about Japan that wrote about the discovery of clay figurines from the Jōmon period (10,000 B.C. - 300 B.C.) (Kitamura). Those clay figurines that were found were covered in designs that were probably the tattoos of that time. In 1948, the body of a Scythian man who lived around the year 550 B.C. was found in Siberia. He had very detailed tattoos that depicted mythical animals that covered his limbs and torso. A number of years after that discovery, another tattooed body of a woman who dated around the same time period was found in a tomb in Altai. The tattoos that covered her shoulders, wrists and thumb were also of mythical creatures. Around 450 B.C., a Greek writer by the name of Herodotus wrote that in the Scythian and Thracian cultures, “‘tattoos were a mark of nobility, and not to have them was testimony of low birth.’ (Lineberry)”.
In different parts of the world, there were different views on whether tattoos were for wealthy nobles or the poorer classes. The Japanese have a word, irezumi, that means ‘the insertion of ink’ and it original meant that tattoos were used as a punishment. In the early 1700’s, Japanese tattoo artists started calling themselves and their tattoos by different names in order to distance their art work from the torturous tattoos of the past.
Early Christians interpreted the Bible to say that God had created man to look like God himself, therefore, “the body as the divine likeness is to be kept whole and is not to disfigure” (Iwai, 150). In the Bible there are three views on tattoos, the first view is that tattoos show worship of a god other than God. This is because when people would die, the pagan way to show mourning was to get tattooed and shave the front of their heads. Another reason a Christian would get a tattoo would be if God gave the tattoo to you. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain kills Abel and God puts a mark on Cain so no one will kill him. The Lord also touched Moses on his hands and forehead and told the people of Israel to put his teachings on their hands and feet. The last view of permanent marks on the skin is that it is a blemish on this body that God has created in his perfect likeness (Iwai, 151-152). In spite of all these conflicting views and the fact that in medieval times the Church opposed such practices, early Christians still got permanent religious symbols. Perhaps it was simply to prove that they had been to Jerusalem but Crusaders and pilgrims would acquire tattoos while they were in the city. It is mostly because of the Crusaders and the pilgrims that the practice of tattooing remained a part of this religion.
In many civilized societies, even though tattoos were still around, they “fell into disrepute, were often legislated against, and became associated principally with the lower classes (Dye).” Tattoos had three functions in ancient times, the first way was to use tattoos as a form of self-decoration that was usually connected with “less advanced barbarians” (Dye). Other functions of tattoos for religious reasons were mostly seen in eastern cultures like the Egyptians and Syrians. The third major function for tattooing in ancient cultures was for punishment, which was first started among the Persians then to the Greeks then the Romans. The Greeks used tattoos, usually on the forehead or face, as a way to make a permanent mark on criminals and slaves who had a habit of running away.
Tattooing became more popular with European sailors in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. During Captain James Cook’s first voyage from 17690-1770, there are accounts of men in Tahiti and New Zealand with faces that had black markings or tattoos. About fifty years after the practice of branding British convicts was no longer used, one officer in the British Royal Navy was set adrift in his ships small boat after the crew members mutinied. The officer’s name was William Bligh and he was able to give the British authorities descriptions of the mutineers, including details about tattoos. The tattoos were all described as typical ‘sailor marks’ which included initials, starts and hearts (Dye).
In 1796, there was an application form created called the Philadelphia Seamen's Protection Certificate Application (SPC-A). A SPC-A was to be filled out by American merchants and would give them safe passage overseas. For American merchants traveling overseas, there was the danger of being taken by the British Navy to fight for Britain. The reason Britain believed it had the right to do this was because America was still a British colony and maintained the right to forcibly recruit seamen. A sailor filling out the SPC-A would want the description of himself to be accurate so he wouldn’t be forced to join the Navy if he had no wish to. These SPC-A’s document many tattoos of seafarers between the years of 1796 and 1818, there were hundreds of SPC-A’s issued each year although some have been destroyed since. There were 979 tattooed men out of the total 9,772 surviving documents and those men altogether had around 2,354 separate designs. Ira Dye makes a point that the seafarers of this time would get remembrances of historical events like “1776” and similarly, seafarers of modern days still get the same types of tattoos like “Remember Pearl Harbor” but the only major difference in the tattoos are where the sailors put them on their bodies (Dye).
In the year 1872, the Japanese government officially banned tattooing even though it was becoming increasingly more popular in other places around the world. Because so many foreigners were traveling to Japan and wanting Japanese style tattoos, another decree was made that allowed for foreign clients to get tattooed although it was still legal for Japanese citizens “to be punished for the administer or acquiring of a tattoo. This ban stayed in place until after World War II when American troops were occupying Japan. When the ban was lifted, ports were opened and Japanese art began to leave its mark on the world. The ukiyo-e was a Japanese art technique that used “saturated color fields, refinement, graphic precision and flat perspective (Kitamura, 46)”. The ukiyo-e images were spread throughout the world and became a source of inspiration for many famous painters. Some of the artists to be influenced by the ukiyo-e were Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and James McNeill Whistler. While Claude Monet was one of the very first artists to discover this style of Japanese art, Vincent Van Gogh actually made his own artistic interpretations of the ukiyo-e images. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by the Japanese art and used the ideas in his own portraits and theater lithographs. Lithographs take an image drawn on a waxy or oily substance, transfer it to a lithographic stone such as limestone, then the stone is used to transfer the image to a clean sheet of paper.
There are many different styles of tattooing that are practiced all around the world. The Tahitians and New Zealanders that Captain James Cook saw on his first journey had tattoos that were images of “men, birds or dogs, the women generally had this figure Z simply on every joint of their fingers and toes, the men had it like wise and both had other different figures such as circles and crescents &ca which they have on their Arms and legs. (Thomas, 14)” A number of years later, sailors applying for SPC-A’s would usually have tattoos of a loved one’s initials, hearts, sometimes both or maybe an anchor. It is thought that the people who actually did the tattoos were men who had some artistic skills and did tattoos on the side but were most likely full-time sailors. In Japanese culture, Japanese tattoos have currently become a big part in heightening the drama in Japanese theater. In modern-day Japan, the actors in the old art of Kabuki theater was declared ‘Living National Treasures’ by the government and many Japanese citizens and foreign visitors attend these types of productions. Kabuki Theater is an ancient art form that preserves the stories of “tattooed heroes and their brave and loyal exploits (Kitamura, 33)”.
The way the world views tattooing has changed very dramatically since the time of Ice Man, even in the couple hundred years since the banning of tattoos in Japan in 1872. In societies like the modern day United States of America, tattoos have been seen as a fad, as something all the cool kids are doing. As Mary Kosut says, “the community of new tattoos transcends age, class, and ethnic boundaries” (Kosut, 1036). The people who get tattoos today are not the typical rebel groups like the working class, bikers, criminals and punks, although these groups still get tattoos. The tattooed people of this era has grown to include “a heterogeneous population of teenagers and young adults, women, African Americans, Latin Americans, urbanites, suburbanites, white-collar professionals, and the college-educated” (Kosut, 1036).
The body modification process of tattooing was not always considered an art form. As seen, it was sometimes used as a form of punishment or even torture in the historical societies of Japan and Europe. Even though it was sometimes seen as a sign of nobility and high social status, it is only recently coming to be called a form of art in our modern American society. There is not one correct way to look at the history of tattooing or even two opposing points of view. Instead, tattooing has a history as colorful and distinct as some of the daring tattoos of today and the past.

Works Cited

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