The Practice Of Tribal Tattooing

Tribal tattooing as a practice, whether Maori tribal tattoos or chest tribal tattoos is believed to be a lot older than any physical evidence can prove. The physical evidence can only be provided by human specimens recovered that have sufficient intact skin with tattoos on them. This is why the evidence is limited to figures such as Otzi the Iceman and Chinese mummies. Still, it is widely believed that tattooing goes back in time a lot further.

It is believed that the earliest form of tattooing took the form of rubbing cuts and open wounds with ashes and hand pricking the skin to place dyes under the skin that were derived from various plants and herbs. Ouch! The wounds may or may not have been self inflicted. The hand pricking was most likely done with sharpened sticks or bones.

The practice that was most frequent was to use tribal patterns for tattoos to decorate the body of important people or to mark a passage of an important person into the afterworld. They were also used to recognize and designate status or rank of an individual in a tribe and as symbols of spirituality and function. Tattoos were also in use to identify those that were outcasts of their time, criminals, slaves of society, or convicts.

Until my next post, click here to find out more about tribal patterns for tattoos