Marked in Time: Tattoos from Ötzi to the Algorithm Age.
On an autumn day in 1991, two German hikers, just 300 feet from the Austrian-Italian border, stumbled upon what they initially believed to be a modern corpse frozen in ice. It was found 2 miles (10,530 feet) above sea level. Ötzi's name comes from the Ötzal Alps. Upon examination, authorities soon discovered the body was anything but modern; in fact, the body was a breathtaking 5,300-year-old mummy, frozen in time and given the nickname "The Iceman." Analysis of the remains reveals that Ötzi died at roughly the age of 30 to 45 & stood around 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m). Evidence suggests Ötzi died a violent death from an arrow shot into his left shoulder that shattered his subclavian artery, causing a fatal hemorrhage. A flint arrowhead was embedded in his left shoulder, with the tear causing a 13 mm (0.5 in) wound. He likely lost consciousness quickly & would have succumbed to his wounds within minutes.
But Ötzi was remarkable for something else: his body preserved the record for the oldest confirmed evidence of tattoos on a human body, dating to 3350-3150 BCE. He had 61 tattoos, mostly simpler lines & crosses etched into his skin made of charcoal. They were hand-picked with sharpened bone or copper tools, not incisions rubbed with pigment. Most of them were on his spine, knee & ankle joints, consistent with traditional Chinese acupuncture points. This suggests a therapeutic purpose rather than decoration. What's intriguing is that Ötzi lived roughly 2,000 years before the oldest generally accepted evidence of acupuncture & well west of its purported origins in China. X-rays reveal that Ötzi had arthritis in his hip joints, knees, spine & ankles, & forensic analysis discovered evidence that he had whipworm, known to cause severe abdominal pain.
Before this, the earliest evidence for tattooing comes from the ancient Egyptians around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, reserved mostly for priestesses & women for ritual purposes, fertility symbolism, religious identity, healing, or therapeutic purposes, like Ötzi's. Ethnographic & historical texts reveal that tattooing has been practiced by just about every culture since historical times. The ancient Greeks tattooed people from the 5th century onwards to mark slaves, punish criminals, brand POWs, & to humiliate political enemies. The tattoo needles were bone or bronze needles about 1-3 inches long, & their depth was 1-2 mm (0.04-0.08 in). The pigments were soot, charcoal, or lampblack. Romans similarly followed the Greeks in marking criminals & slaves. The Roman term was "stigma," meaning a puncture mark of shame. The tattoos were also used on gladiators & later for soldiers, which were for unit marks or imperial symbols.
In Japan during the 1600s-1800s CE, criminals were tattooed with a single line across their forehead for a 1st offense; for the 2nd offense, an arch was added & for the 3rd offense, another line was added, completing the symbol for "dog"—the original 3 strikes & you're out. The dog symbol meant the criminal was to be permanently banished from the domain, losing all protections, forcing many to become itinerant beggars. They used iron or bone needles with soot or ink punctured in the forehead 1-2 mm deep (0.03-0.07 in) with no anesthesia. The Mayans, Aztecs, and Inca used tattooing from 250 CE to 1533 CE, mostly for religious ceremonies, warrior identity, social status & beauty & adulthood rites. They used bone cactus spines, or obsidian needles about 1-3 inches long, & pigments were soot, charcoal, or plant resins. The process was painful, with hand-poked methods.
Early Britons from 800 BCE to 100 CE used 1-3 inch long tattoo needles penetrating 1-2 mm into the skin for religious & magical purposes, for warrior symbolism & for tribal identity. They used bone needles, bronze or iron awls, sharpened flint & pigments made of charcoal, soot, & iron oxide. The Danes, Norse, & Saxons are known to have placed family crests on their bodies. During the Crusades, some Europeans tattooed a cross on their arms or hands to indicate their desire for Christian burials should they be killed or die.
The word "tattoo" comes from the Tahitian word "tatau," which means "to mark" or "to strike." The word refers to some of the traditional modes of application where ink is tapped into the skin using sharp sticks or bones. Traditional Polynesian tattooing uses bone combs 1-3 inches long, where the artist taps the combs with wooden mallets using soot-based pigments into the skin.
Arctic tattooing dates back continuously for 2,000-3,500 years based on mummies from Siberia, Greenland & the St. Lawrence regions & is still practiced today, where they use a soot-coated thread pulled under the skin using a needle. The method is unique to the Arctic & mechanically different from hand-poking. The thread creates linear designs designed for spiritual protection & social identity & healing & pain relief.
Modern electric tattoo machines are modeled on the one by NY tattoo artist Samuel O'Reilly in 1891. His design was not invented from scratch but was modelled onThomas Edison's 1876 electric autographic engraver pen, a device originally meant for duplicating documents. O'Reilly adapted it with a hollow tube to hold ink, a reciprocating needle bar & a reservoir to feed the pigment. He adjusted stroke depth to 1-2 mm (0.04-0.08 in), a safe dermal depth. Modern machines go up & down 50-3,000 vibrations per minute. They penetrate only 1 mm (0.04 in) below the skin's surface to deliver pigments.
Our body sees injected pigments as non-toxic foreign elements that need to be contained, so certain cells called macrophages engulf tattoo pigments to keep them from migrating. When the macrophage dies, the pigment is released only for new macrophages to immediately engulf it. Once the pigments are fixed, they move poorly & become relatively fixed in the connective tissue, which is why tattoo designs do not generally change with time.
Surprisingly, the pigments themselves are colorless but appear to be colorful because they're arranged in crystals in various ways, such as when colors are produced when light refracts off of them. This is the same physics behind peacock feathers, blue morpho butterflies, hummingbird iridescence & opals. This is why carbon black looks blue-black or titanium oxide appears white. Iron oxide looks red or brown, & some pigments even glow under black light. But when tattoo artists use metal salts known as oxides that react with oxygen, these are absolutely colorful. Iron oxide, for example, is red, while other iron compounds appear yellow, brown, or black. Cadmium sulfide is bright yellow, & cadmium selenide is red. Chromium oxide is a deep green, while copper carbonate is a malachite green. Azurite and cobalt aluminate are blue; titanium dioxide is a bright white, while zinc oxide is a soft white.
Is there any evidence of harm to health? That depends on what pigments are used. Although mercury sulfide is no longer known to be toxic, chromium oxide is allergenic to some people; nickel is one of the most common causes of tattoo allergies; titanium dioxide is inert but can cause nodules or granulomas. They are local, not systemic. Cadmium yellow can make skin inflamed, blistered, or itchy when exposed to strong UV rays. Then there are organic pigments like azo dyes & aromatic amines, which are poorly studied, but we know they can break down into potentially carcinogenic molecules. They have been poorly studied, so we still lack evidence where they're concerned.
Finally, how about American web designer Andrew Fischer, who auctioned his forehead on eBay as an advertisement site, which sold for over $37,375 USD to Snorestop, a U.S. anti-snoring product company, leaving him richer with a semi-permanent tattoo inscribed on his forehead? The tattoo lasted for a month on his forehead. You know, if Ötzi weren't in deep freeze at a museum in Italy, I think he would be rolling over in his grave.