Listening 17 – Listen for specific words

Tattooing is an age-old way of creating art on the body. The known tattoo was discovered on the ‘The Iceman,’ a 5,200-year-old mummy found on the Italian-Austrian border.

When inspecting the seemingly random pattern of dots and small crosses on the Iceman’s lower back and right knee and ankle, Professor Brothwell at the University of York, England, found that the tattooed body parts corresponded with the areas of stress-induced damage. This leads to the hypothesis that the tattoos had an essentially therapeutic role in that ancient ; the markings may have been believed to alleviate joint pain.

Among Egyptian mummies, tattoos were almost exclusively on females – this fact, combined with evidence of status, led to the belief that tattoos were used to mark prostitutes in ancient Egypt. However, the theory that tattoos also had a supernatural protective role at the time of pregnancy and childbirth has recently popularity. The distribution of tattoos around the abdomen, thighs, and breasts – especially the figure of a deity considered to be the protector of women in labor – lends to this theory.

Other ancient cultures, such as the tribes living in the Altai Mountain region tattooed themselves with mythical and marks of nobility. The absence of tattoos was considered a mark of low birth. On the other end of the spectrum, the Greeks and Romans often used tattoos to mark .

Of course, in ancient times no machines were used and tattoos were by hand, using a sharp point with a wooden handle. This technique is still used among the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand today.

These tattoos served a crucial role in traditional Maori culture, where facial tattoos represented one’s lineage and marked an important rite of passage into adulthood. Men were usually tattooed on their , buttocks, and thighs, while the women were historically tattooed around their lips and noses, as this prevented the skin from wrinkled with age.

The history of tattoos in Japan has been an especially turbulent one. Initially tattoos were fashionable and high social status, then they became markers for prisoners, and were later outlawed. For many years they were associated with criminals and gangs. Although tattoos have experienced a resurgence in popularity among Japanese youth, there is still a stigma on them among the general population, and people with tattoos may be banned from certain , such as fitness centers and public baths.

In the Americas, the pre-Columbian Native American cultures also used tattoos on women to help them during pregnancy. For a number of years, tattoos were mainly found on sailors, and heavily tattooed people were part of “freak shows” in American circuses. In recent decades, tattoos have gone from a somewhat deviant practice to a mainstream part of Western , transcending genders, economic classes, and age groups.

Humans have used tattoos for myriad reasons for of years. Perhaps this is essentially what tattoos represent today: a to our ancestral roots.