TATTOOS

Tattooing has been a Eurasian (meaning the traditional land masses of Europe and Asia) practice since the Neolithic times (that we can prove). Otzi the Iceman, dating from the fourth millennium B.C. was found in the Otz valley of the Alps had about 57 tattoos all over his body, lower back, spine, ankles, behind his knee, and legs which consisted of simple dots and lines, and a portrait of Jimi Hendrix!!! (just kidding). Other mummies have been found in the 2nd millennium BC in the Pazyryk (modern day Russia near the border of China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan,) and Ukok (modern day Siberia) plateau. Tatooing in Japan is thought to go back as far as the Paleolithic era (10,000 years ago) Various other cultures have their own tattooing practices including cuts and scarification.

The word "tattoo" is borrowed from the Samoan word tatau, meaning to mark or strike twice (the latter referring to traditional methods of applying the designs). The first syllable "ta", meaning "hand", is repeated twice as an onomatopoeic (a word or grouping of words that imitates the sound it is creating, onomatopoeia) reference to the repetitive nature of the action, and the final syllable "U" translates to "color". The instrument used to pierce the skin in Polynesian tattooing is called a hahau, the syllable "ha" meaning to "strike or pierce"

Tattoos have always served as rites of passage, marks of status, and have also had religious and spiritual devotion. Sometimes they are rewards of bravery, sexual lures, signs of fertility, pledges of love or pains of punishment, amulets of protection, as the yantra tattoo symbolizes in Loas, Cambodia and Thailand.some are magical, and some are criminal, some are for and from the family. some relirios, and some memorial...to me all are beautiful in their own way.

*many of this knowledge was taken from wikipedia ..I changed what I could in my own words...please don't castrate me for plagiarism ..not sure how or to whom I can credit this information...I need my nuts.