Body Art and Tattoos

            Tattooing is becoming a trend nowadays and has become very popular to adolescent and adults in their early twenties. There are many forms of body modification, but tattooing is the most common of all. There can be multitude of reasons why someone may choose to modify themselves. For some, it is a way of expressing their thoughts, beliefs, experiences and their past-all of which make up of who they are at a fundamental levels. The method of modification that they use can become just as colorful as the individual. A tattoo is a form of body modification, made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. .
             The English word tattoo is adapted in the Tahitian word tatau, meaning 'marking something,' but also has obvious affinity with Polynesian word ta, which means 'striking something.' There are good reasons that tattoos goes back to Bronze Age. In the 1990's, between Austria and Italy, a human body was recovered with lots of tattoos; it is estimated that the man died somewhere 3200 BCE. It is possible that the body marks were in some ways medicinal or use in a practice of healing; however, it could also be decorative and bearers of meaning in terms of rank and identity. There is also reason to believe that tattooing took place in ancient Greece, Persia, and among the ancient Britons and Gauls, as well as Africa, in the Americas and throughout Asia. In many cultures the tattooing process tested the endurance of male population, their rank and identification of their tribe, and also as a way of marking prisoners and slaves, visually symbolizing their inferiority. In the Ancient Egypt, tattooing also has been female practices, breaking the stereotype as inherently masculine. Female mummies from Egypt with tattoos were often assumed as prostitutes, but it is also shows that other woman of all social classes likely were tattooed. The nature of their tattoos is used to protect the holder against illness or to ward off bad omens, also applied to the struggles of pregnancy and birth in women's lives.