Tattooing is really, really old! We know people did it way back to the Stone Age, like 5,000 years ago. Ötzi the Iceman, frozen in ice, had tattoos on him, making him one of the oldest known examples. People found tattoos on mummies from Egypt, Siberia, and even Greenland, showing it was common across the globe.
Tattoos weren't just decoration; they had meaning. In places like North America, Inuit people used tattoos for important life changes, like a girl becoming a woman. The Osage used them to show bravery in battle. Some groups, like the Haudenosaunee, even used them to record their war successes.
A special kind of tattooing, using thorns or bone tools, was common in places like Taiwan and Southeast Asia long ago. These tools helped create the unique patterns seen in Austronesian cultures. Even before the Austronesians, people in Papua New Guinea might have been doing tattoos too.
Tattooing was also important in other parts of the world. In China, people with tattoos were buried thousands of years ago. Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans in the past all had their own tattoo traditions. Even though explorers and missionaries sometimes wrote about or tried to stop it, the practice continued in many cultures.
