Nubia, the region that consists of modern-day Egypt and Sudan, has yielded a rather surprising find – a Christogram tattoo has been unearthed on the body of a person dating back 1,300 years. This...
In a harmonious blend of identity and strength, Marjorie Taub breathes life back into the ancient art of Inuit tattooing. With practiced skill, she employs two techniques that date back thousands of...
The ancient art of 'sak yant,' traditional Thai tattoos , has long been cherished by locals for its spiritual significance. In recent times, however, an increasing number of foreigners are drawn to...
Meet Waseem Razzouk, the guardian of an extraordinary heritage that spans an astonishing 27 generations. Nestled within his family's humble tattoo shop, a tradition dating back an astounding 700...
Getting inked has been around longer than you’d think. While the idea of tattooing certainly seems like it would’ve been a more recent development, archaeologists have discovered quite the opposite...
It has long been known from carvings and tomb paintings that the ancient Egyptians used branding irons to mark their cattle. Now a new study presents evidence that they also used branding stamps on...
Ancient burial sites in Egypt have yielded tattooed mummies, that are predominantly female rather than male. Over time, various debates have arisen about who these mummies were, in terms of their...
In an unusual performance, even by today’s standards of contemporary, process-driven art, artist Nicole Wilson has been replicating on her own body and in her own blood the tattoos discovered on the...
The surgically enhanced face and skull of an ancient tattooed Tashtyk man, hidden behind a stirring gypsum death mask for 1,700 years, has been 3D-visualized for the first time. Discovered wearing a...
Eleven 1000-year-old graves containing skeletons from the Moche civilization have been found in Peru. Some have been mutilated with their feet removed and tattoos imprinted on their skulls. Two...
In 2014, a team of scientists in London carried out high-tech scanning on eight Egyptian mummies from the British Museum, uncovering fascinating information about them, including the revelation that...
Did the Norsemen of Scandinavia have tattoos? Did runic script adorn their arms as they sailed their longships down fjords? While material remains offer few clues, one piece of historical evidence...
A Ph.D. student has made an astonishing discovery - the earliest known Native American tattoo artifact. It is estimated that it is 2000-years-old and came from the very important Basket-maker II...
New Zealand was one of the last landmasses to be colonized by humans. When Pleistocene megafauna had gone extinct elsewhere in the world, New Zealand was still inhabited by the moas, giant flightless...
About 3,600 years ago, someone decided to bury a collection of sharpened turkey bones and mussel shells. The items were unearthed in 1985 and then forgotten for almost three decades. However, a...
Ötzi the iceman was discovered in the Oetz Valley, Austria, in 1991 by some German tourists. When this 5,300-year-old mummy was first found it was believed the frozen corpse belonged to a soldier who...
Emily Poelina-Hunter / The Conversation Almost a quarter of Australian women now have tattoos - a trend some attribute to the influence of feminism. What I find interesting is that the mainstreaming...
By The Siberian Times reporter A mummified potentate and his wife were found in a burial mound 42 metres in diameter. They went to the next life alongside nine saddled and harnessed geldings. Now,...
A group of cemetery workers clearing a graveyard in Thailand near the Laos border were shocked to excavate the corpse of a man whose skin had been preserved , as if by magic. In fact, some people...
Tattoos have played a role in the lives of prehistoric and modern man alike. Societal status, art, religion, and medicine all create a tradition in tattoo design that spans across centuries and...
Australian archaeologists have examined prehistoric obsidian tools from the Nanngu site in the Solomon Islands and have determined they may have been used for tattooing people. The 3,000-year-old...
The English word tattoo is commonly said to be derived from the Polynesian word tatau or tatu . This Polynesian word means ‘to mark something’. Additionally, this word is an onomatopoeia, and is...
Mokomokai are preserved heads that are produced by the Māoris of New Zealand. These are not just any heads, but heads that have been decorated by moko. Moko is a traditional art form practiced by the...
Archaeologists made a stunning discovery in Russia when they uncovered mummies bearing intricate tattoos on their bodies. The mummified remains belong to members of the Pazyryk tribe. Originating in...