History of Tattoos in Ancient Culture

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Shotsie Gorman. I am here as a tatoo artist, a professional tatoo artist for Expert Village. When the hyrogliphs were interpreted it was found that these tatoos were used for female menstruation issues, that they believe that they had healing capabilities, that the images themselves could draw healing energy for women who were infertile for instance or had menstruation issues. That was really the earliest proof of tatooing, although there were certainly people during the early centuries of world exploration where they came across tribes virtually everywhere in the world aboriginal cultures who were practicing tatooing and they had talked about the practice of tatooing going on centuries before then as well. Unfortunately since tatooing is on skin, there is very little actual proof that there was tatooing going on in prehistoric cultures. After that I guess the next major find was a man frozen in the Tundra in the Northwestern Ukraine a Skythian, who was covered with images of animals. This is the first time that visual imagery other than abstract patterns and spirals and those kinds of tatooing were proven was with a Skythian mummy. This mummy, by the way is on display at an ethnographic museum in St. Petersburg currently and can be visited. His body was covered with animal references so this is the first time in history that these kinds of references were found. It predates Christianity by about 5,000 years."