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Thinking of getting a tattoo?
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Decorating your birthday suit would add
another personal story
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to a history of tattoos stretching back
at least 8000 years.
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Tattooed mummies from around the world
attest to the universality
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of body modification
across the millennia,
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and to the fact that you really were
stuck with it forever
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if your civilization never got around
to inventing laser removal.
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A mummy from the Chinchorro culture
in pre-Incan Peru
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has a mustache tattooed
on his upper lip.
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Ötzi, mummified iceman of the Alps, has
patterned charcoal tats along his spine,
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behind his knee
and around his ankles,
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which might be from an early
sort of acupuncture.
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The mummy of Amunet, a priestess
in Middle Kingdom Egypt,
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features tattoos thought to symbolize
sexuality and fertility.
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Even older than the mummies,
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figurines of seemingly tattooed
people,
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and tools possibly used for tattooing
date back tens of thousands of years.
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Tattoos don't have one historical
origin point that we know of,
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but why do we English speakers
call them all tattoos?
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The word is an anglophonic modification
of "tatao,"
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a Polynesian word used in Tahiti,
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where English captain James Cook
landed in 1769
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and encountered heavily tattooed
men and women.
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Stories of Cook's findings
and the tattoos his crew acquired
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cemented our usage of "tattoo"
over previous words like
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"scarring," "painting," and "staining,"
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and sparked a craze in Victorian
English high society.
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We might think of Victorians
having Victorian attitudes
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about such a risque thing,
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and you can find such sentiments, and even
bans, on tattooing throughout history.
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But while publicly some Brits looked down
their noses at tattoos,
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behind closed doors
and away from their noses,
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lots of people had them.
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Reputedly, Queen Victoria had a tiger
fighting a python,
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and tattoos became very popular
among Cook's fellow soldiers,
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who used them to note their travels.
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You crossed the Atlantic? Get an anchor.
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Been south of the Equator?
Time for your turtle tat.
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But Westerners sported tattoos
long before meeting
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the Samoans and Maori
of the South Pacific.
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Crusaders got the Jerusalem Cross
so if they died in battle,
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they'd get a Christian burial.
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Roman soldiers on Hadrian's Wall
had military tattoos
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and called the Picts beyond it "Picts,"
for the pictures painted on them.
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There's also a long tradition
of people being tattooed unwillingly.
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Greeks and Romans tattooed slaves
and mercenaries to discourage
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escape and desertion.
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Criminals in Japan were tattooed as such
as far back as the 7th century.
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Most infamously, the Nazis tattooed
numbers on the chest or arms
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of Jews and other prisoners
at the Auschwitz concentration camp
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in order to identify stripped corpses.
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But tattoos forced on prisoners
and outcasts can be redefined
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as people take ownership
of that status or history.
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Primo Levi survived Auschwitz and wore
short sleeves to Germany after the war
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to remind people of the crime
his number represented.
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Today, some Holocaust
survivors' descendants
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have their relatives numbers'
tattooed on their arms.
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The Torah has rules against tattoos,
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but what if you want to make indelible
what you feel should never be forgotten?
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And those criminals and outcasts of Japan,
where tattooing was eventually outlawed
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from the mid-19th century to
just after World War II,
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added decoration to their penal tattoos,
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with designs borrowed from
woodblock prints, popular literature
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and mythical spirtual iconography.
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Yakuza gangs viewed their outsider tattoos
as signs of lifelong loyalty and courage.
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After all, they lasted forever
and it really hurt to get them.
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For the Maori, those tattoos were an
accepted mainstream tradition.
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If you shied away from the excruciating
chiseling in of your moko design,
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your unfinished tattoo marked
your cowardice.
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Today, unless you go the traditional route,
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your tattoo artist will probably use
a tattoo machine
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based on the one patented by
Samuel O'Reilly in 1891,
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itself based on Thomas Edison's
stencil machine from 1876.
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But with the incredibly broad history
of tattoos giving you so many options,
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what are you going to get?
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This is a bold-lined expression of
who you are,
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or you want to appear to be.
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As the naturalist aboard Cook's ship
said of the tataoed Tahitians,
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"Everyone is marked, thus in different
parts of his body,
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according maybe to his humor
or different circumstances of his life."
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Maybe your particular humor
and circumstances
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suggest getting a symbol
of cultural heritage,
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a sign of spirituality,
sexual energy,
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or good old-fashioned
avant-garde defiance.
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A reminder of a great accomplishment,
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or of how you think it would look
cool if Hulk Hogan rode a Rhino.
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It's your expression, your body,
so it's your call.
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Just two rules:
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you have to find a tattooist who
won't be ashamed to draw your idea,
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and when in doubt,
you can never go wrong with "Mom."