Skin Art
A brief history of tattoos
Posted by Myro on 10:17 PM
A tattoo is a marking made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. The word tattoo is said to have two major derivations- from the Polynesian word ‘ta’ which means striking something diverse as the people who wear them and the tahitian word ‘tatau’ which means ‘to mark something’. Tattoos are created by inserting colored materials beneath the skins surface.
The history of tattoo began over 5000 years ago. It was discovered by accident. Someone had a small wound, and rubbed it with a hand that was dirty with soot and ashes from the fire. When the wound had healed, they saw that a mark stayed permanently.
Tattooing has been a Eurasian practice since Neolithic times. "Otzi the Iceman", dated circa 3300 BC, bore 57 separate tattoos: a cross on the inside of the left knee, six straight lines 15 centimeters long above the kidneys and numerous small parallel lines along the lumbar, legs and the ankles, exhibiting possible therapeutic tattoos (treatment of arthritis). Still relatively unknown, some of them could date from the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Despite the social sciences' growing fascination with tattooing, and the immense popularity of tattoos themselves the practice has not left much of a historical record.
In the Philippines, tattooing has been a part of Filipino tribal life since pre-Hispanic colonization of the Philippine Islands. When the Spanish first landed in the Philippine Islands, they were met by the tribal people of the Visayas, who had full body tattooing, the Spanish dubbed these Islands as "La Isla De Los Pintados" or "The Islands of the Painted Ones". Tattooing in the Philippines is a tribal form of rank and accomplishments, some tribes believed that tattoos had magical qualities.