History of Military Tattoos

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Shotsie Gorman. I'm here as professional tattoo artist for Expert Village. The history of the spread in Europe for instance, if you wanted to research the history of military tattoo, it goes directly back to the Roman Empire. As the Romans began to expand throughout Europe they moved through northwester Europe where they encountered the galls the Goths, the Titans and the Pagans. All of these tribes were completely covered with tattoos. Each of their own pattern and design. Each unique to their own culture, but all were covered with tattoos. The Roman legion heirs would find themselves in these far flung places so far removed from Roman culture that they would become culturized so they would start to get tattooed like the people living in the culture. Maybe in some cases they got tattooed just to go home at some point and say "I was at this place, I have proof. I saw the Goths, the galls and the Titans." And they started coming back to Rome after spending time in these far reaching parts of the Roman Empire and it stimulated a huge following of tattooed people in Rome. It became very, very popular. Ironically, as Rome becomes more pias and Christian influence grows in Rome; Constantine decides that Christianity will become the official religion of the Roman Empire, there is a ban issued on tattooing. SO they tried to stop tattooing using a quote from Leviticus in the Old Testament saying that you shouldn't mark your body in reference to the dead. Many scholars, biblical scholars, have said that this particular Old Testament reference was directly in reference to a cult of the dead at the time of Christ where people would carry fetish materials: hair and bones, teeth and things from a dead person. Then get marked in a way that either mimicked a tattoo that they had or some reference of that person with the hopes of taking their power. So it was really out of an anthropological concept called Totemism where you pull your energy from other people by using theses totems or symbols of that person."