The man continues, “The British Post Office sent me an advertisement leaflet the other day. It showed a father with visible sleeves and a child. It was once a controversial practice that the Post Office, a conservative organization, would make. This could have caused a backlash. It’s now accepted as progressive.”
Lodder however insists that tattoos should be considered a historical medium and not a phenomenon. The media has been guilty of downplaying the tradition of tattoos by focusing on recent trends. He says that it is important to look at the past in order to understand tattoos’ history. According to him, “Western tattooing was only a commodity-based artform for about 140 years,” which suggests that King George V who had a “desirable dragon tattooed on his arm in the middle of an era of British colonialism, is one of the main drivers of its commercialization. trip As a teenager, I went to Japan in 1881. He adds that there is physical evidence to support tattooing dating back to 3250 BC.
Ancient roots
Lodder can be used to refer to Ötzi, a European Tyrolean Iceman whose frozen bodies were found under an Alpine glacier at the Austrian/Italian border. He was finally discovered 5300 years later by a confused German couple on their walk in the Alps. Ötzi had 61 tattoos across his body, with the tattoos (which were primarily sets of horizontal and vertical lines) thought to have had a therapeutic purpose akin to acupuncture – since they tended to be clustered around Ötzi’s lower back and joints, areas where anthropologists say the Iceman was suffering from degenerative pains and aches.
Others have even more elaborate designs. On the body of “Gebelein Man”, which has been in British Museum since more than 100 year, is a tattoo that depicts an interlocking bull-sheep. his arm. This naturally mummified corpse is from Ancient Egypt’s Predynastic period, around 5,000 years ago. The tattoos were permanently applied under the skin with a carbon-based substance. [experts believe it was likely some type of soot]. Evidence also suggests that Ancient Egypt’s women had tattoos. Experts believe that these were inked into skin by the gods to guard their children during pregnancy. Amunet’s 1891 discovery, which was made by a priestess to the goddess Hathor, at Thebes showed that extensive tattooing had been done on her mummified body. abdominal region.
A heavily-tattooed female warrior priestess dubbed the “Princess of Ukok” was discovered by archaeologists in the Altai Mountains – which run through Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan – back in 1993. The discovery This 2,500 year-old body was especially noteworthy due to its beautiful preservation and the exquisite illustrations on the torso of mythical beasts including Capricorn antlers.
She was believed to have been 25 years old when she passed away. The princess belonged to the Pazyryks of Scythian-era, which saw body tattoos both as a sign of social status and something to help them locate their loved ones in afterlife. All these discoveries, according to Lodder, completely shatter the notion that tattooing is somehow a new “trend” – if anything, it is one of the oldest artforms on record.
