A tattoo is a design made under the skin with ink or other pigment. Usually decorative or symbolic. It’s a type of body modification.

• Etymology

The word comes from the tahitien tataus which means “to mark”.

• History

Tattooing is a practice in eurasia since the neolithic area. “Otzi” the iceman found in the alpes is dead in 3500 bc. He got therapetic tattoos on his legs and the bottom of his back. In Xinjiang in china several mummies, they were tattooed and of european origine. Three tattooed mummies were found in the permafrost of altai. Their tattoos show animals in a complexe curved style.

Europeans rediscovered tattoo during the exploration of the south pacific by captain Cook in the 1770’s; and particularly sailors who were identified with thos marks untill the middle of the XXth century. The reasons why people decide to get tattooed are multiple: identification to a group, religious ritual and magical use are the most common, so the sociology of the body thinks it’s an important object of study.

Through history people had been tattooed for many different reasons. The most famous is identification “ka-tzetnik” in the concentration camps during the holocauste. Some tattoos are placed on animals rarely for decorative reasons. Those of the companies have identifications and some parts of their body are treated. Some tribal cultures create a tattoo by cutting the skin and then rub on the wound the ink, ashes or others agents. It can go along with scarification. Other cultures create tattoo marks by hiting the ink in the skin with sharp bones. Nowadays the method is to put the ink in the skin thanks to a needle link to a tube and an eletrical canon. When turned on the needles are moving very fast upward and downward so it enable the insertion of the ink in the superior part of the epidermis. The machines works according to an electromagnetic process and are made by numerous comapnies in the world. The permanet cosmetics imitate lips borders, lip’s colors, eye shadding, mascara etc…