tattoos in neolithic times

Tattoos were an Eurasian practice in Neolithic times, and have even been found in a mummy of the second century AD.

In 1991 a neolithic mummy was found inside a glacier of the Austro-Italian Alps, with 57 tattoos in the back. This mummy is known as the Ice Man or as Ötzi, it is the human corpse with the oldest skin that has been found, and its age varies according to different authors: Cate Lineberry, of the Smithsonian, calculates for him some 5,200 years of antiquity.

From this discovery can be said that the tattoo is as old as the human being itself. However, the different cultures that used the tattoo did it in different ways; As well as art, in the sense of creating ritual or symbolic meanings, as in Ancient Egypt, as marking or pointing to criminals, as is the case of ancient Greece and Rome. It is even believed that, because of their position in the Ice Man, the marks served a therapeutic purpose.

Although the word tattoo is possibly derived from the Samoan tátau, which means to mark or strike twice (referring to the traditional method of applying the designs or templates), it is incorporated into Spanish through the French, tatouage. Sailors traveling on the Pacific found the Samoans, and those who were fascinated by their tattoos mistakenly translated the word "tatau" as a tattoo.

In Japanese, the word used for traditional designs or those designs that are applied using traditional methods is "irezumi" (ink insertion), while "tattoo" is used for designs of non-Japanese origin.

In Spanish, tattoo enthusiasts can refer to them as tattoos, or use the term castellanizado tatu, although neither of these two is still collected in the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.

Blessed are the tattoos provided they allow to appreciate the beauty stamped on the skin of these tattooed girls, which were collected by the site crispme.com