Tattooing, an ancient practice, spans across cultures and continents, with evidence of body art dating back thousands of years. One of the earliest known examples comes from Ötzi the Iceman, a naturally preserved mummy found in the Alps in 1991. The 5,000-year-old remains reveal that Ötzi had 61 tattoos on his wrists, legs, back, and torso. Around the same time, a male mummy from Predynastic Egypt was found with tattoos of a wild ox and a Barbary sheep on his upper arms, while a female counterpart had S-shaped curves on her shoulder. Meanwhile, a Chinchorro mummy from Peru, dated to around 4,000 years ago, sported a thin tattoo mustache.
The practice of tattooing may have developed independently on all six inhabited continents, with people in different regions marking their bodies for various cultural, social, or spiritual reasons. Nina Jablonski, emeritus professor of anthropology at Penn State University, suggests that tattooing was likely a widespread phenomenon: “Tattoos have probably existed in most places at most times, at least in some members of a population,” Jablonski says. She attributes this to human observation and creativity, noting that early people may have unintentionally placed charcoal under their skin and, in some cases, recognized the potential to use it for permanent body art.
Records of tattooing appear in writings dating back to the 3rd century, with references to Japanese tattoos and even older mentions of Chinese tattoos. In North America, many pre-Columbian cultures, such as the Cree, practiced tattooing, with the Cree, for instance, developing traditional chin tattoos.
Researchers in Utah have uncovered a 2,000-year-old tattooing tool, while 500-year-old mummies from Greenland have been found with facial tattoos, including lines, dots, and arches. Other ancient cultures known for their tattooing practices include the Nubians, Filipinos, Britons, and Mayans.
Greek and Roman Tattoos
Although tattoos were often stigmatized, they were occasionally used in ancient Greece, particularly for ceremonial or symbolic purposes. Ptolemy IV, a Greek Macedonian ruler of Egypt, was reported to have gotten a tattoo of ivy leaves to honor the god Dionysus. The Greek historian Herodotus, around 450 B.C., recorded that for Scythians and Thracians, tattoos were a sign of nobility. Herodotus also recounted the story of a tyrant in present-day Turkey who tattooed a secret message on a slave’s head—one that could only be read after shaving the slave’s hair.
Later, the ancient Romans referred to the tattooed people of Scotland as the Picts or “painted ones” due to their distinctive body art.
During the Middle Ages, Crusaders commonly tattooed crosses on their hands or arms, while in the Polynesian islands, extensive tattooing was practiced. It is from this tradition that the word “tattoo” originates.
Ancient Tattooing: Sophisticated and Intricate
Surprisingly, many ancient tattoos were highly detailed and sophisticated. A recent study, published in January 2025 in the journal PNAS, examined over 100 mummies from the Chancay civilization (A.D. 900) in modern-day Peru. The study revealed tattoos of remarkable precision, with lines as thin as 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters, even finer than those produced by modern tattoo needles.
Co-author Michael Pittman, a paleobiologist and archaeologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was astonished by the findings: “For us, that was kind of nuts,” he said. “We didn’t realize the level of sophistication that went into these.”
These discoveries show that ancient cultures not only embraced tattooing but also perfected it, creating art on the body that was as intricate as any other form of expression.
Related topics: