The history of tattoos is almost as old as the history of mankind itself. The most famous historical figure in the history of tattoos was Otzi the Iceman, going back around 3000 BCE. When thawed out, he was found bearing 57 different figures and symbols on his body. There have also been tattooed mummies that were found in western China going back to around 1000 BCE. If you wish to go back 10,000 years, there appears to have been tattooing in ancient Japan as well. Tattoos that were found on the body of Otzi and various Chinese mummies were in the form of crosses, straight lines, monsters, and series of dots. The history of tribal patterns for tattoos is quite extensive, rich, and colorful.

The Somoan word tatau is responsible for the modern day word known as tattoo. Tatau in Somoan means to mark or strike twice. The very first reference to the word tatau in the English language was in a diary kept by Captain James Cook of England. In 1769 he stopped off on one of his voyages to the Marquesas Islands. He made notes in his diary of the strange ritual and practice of the natives of printing signs on their body and their calling it tattaw. It was believed that the crew of his vessel returned to England and recanted what they had seen and the rest is history. From England, tattooing spread to the rest of Europe.

Tribal tattooing as a practice, whether Maori tribal tattoos or chest tribal tattoos is believed to be a lot older than any physical evidence can prove. The physical evidence can only be provided by human specimens recovered that have sufficient intact skin with tattoos on them. This is why the evidence is limited to figures such as Otzi the Iceman and Chinese mummies. Still, it is widely believed that tattooing goes back in time a lot further.

It is believed that the earliest form of tattooing took the form of rubbing cuts and open wounds with ashes and hand pricking the skin to place dyes under the skin that were derived from various plants and herbs. Ouch! The wounds may or may not have been self inflicted. The hand pricking was most likely done with sharpened sticks or bones.

The practice that was most frequent was to use tribal patterns for tattoos to decorate the body of important people or to mark a passage of an important person into the afterworld. They were also used to recognize and designate status or rank of an individual in a tribe and as symbols of spirituality and function. Tattoos were also in use to identify those that were outcasts of their time, criminals, slaves of society, or convicts.