Tattooing: History and Modern Times

A Raw History of Tattooing:

The world’s obsessed with tattoos today, but this isn’t some trendy fad cooked up by Instagram influencers. Tattooing’s been around longer than a ton of modern day ways of lige—way longer. We’re talking thousands of years, etched into human skin by the earliest cultures we have in recorded history. These people used ink to mark their stories, their status, and their survival. Let’s talk about it.

The OG's of Tattoo Art:

Our earliest evidence of tattoo comes from around 3300 BCE—meet Ötzi the Iceman, a mummified guy found in the Alps with 61 tattoos. Simple lines and crosses, probably stabbed into his skin with soot and bone needles. Anthropologists think it was medicinal—acupuncture to ease his joint pain. That’s Europe. Rewind even further, and you’ve got Egypt in 3100 BCE, where mummies like Amunet, a priestess, rocked dotted patterns on their bodies. Spiritual protection? Fertility charms? We don’t know for sure, but it was deliberate as hell.

Then there’s China, around 2000 BCE, where the Dayak people of Borneo were poking ink into their skin to ward off evil spirits. Over in Siberia, the Pazyryk nomads (500 BCE) were flexing full-body masterpieces—animals and mythical beasts—preserved in permafrost graves. These weren’t just pretty pictures; they screamed identity, power, and connection to something bigger. Tattooing was global before globalization was even a thought.

The Cultures That Built the Tradition:

Over millennia, tattooing spread like wildfire across continents. The ancient Thracians in Greece (500 BCE) inked their warriors. Japan’s Ainu people used it for rituals, laying the groundwork for what’d become the iconic Irezumi style—think full-body yakuza art—by the Edo period (1600s). In the Philippines, the Visayans were tattooing intricate tribal designs by 900 CE, earning the nickname “Pintados” (the painted ones) from Spanish colonizers. Every culture added fuel to the fire, but one stands above the rest: Polynesia.

Polynesia:

If tattooing’s a religion, Polynesia’s the high priest. Starting around 1500 BCE, these Pacific Islanders—especially Samoans, Tongans, and Marquesans—turned ink into an art form that’s still unmatched. The word “tattoo” itself comes from the Polynesian “tatau,” meaning to strike or mark. They used combs of bone or shell, dipped in ink from candlenut soot, and hammered them into the skin with a mallet. No anesthesia, no shortcuts—just raw endurance. A Samoan pe’a (male full-body tattoo) could take weeks, and if you tapped out, you shamed your whole family.

Polynesian tattoos were a map of your life: your rank, your lineage, your courage. Chiefs and warriors wore them as badges of honor; women got them too, signaling strength and beauty. This wasn’t decoration—it was sacred, a rite of passage woven into their cosmology. When European explorers like Captain Cook stumbled across it in the 1700s, they were floored. Sailors brought “tatau” back to the West, and the seed was planted. Polynesia didn’t just contribute to tattooing—they defined it.

America Enters the Chat:

Fast forward to the 1800s, and America takes Polynesia’s gift and runs with it—hard. Sailors and soldiers start getting inked, but it’s the 20th century when shit explodes. Enter Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins in the 1930s, blending Polynesian boldness with American grit—anchors, pin-ups, eagles. He’s tattooing in Hawaii, soaking up that Polynesian vibe, and spitting out designs that scream freedom and rebellion. Then, post-WWII, tattoo parlors pop up like weeds in port towns. By the ‘60s, Ed Hardy’s studying under Sailor Jerry, and in the ‘70s, he’s fusing Japanese techniques with American flash, pushing tattoos into fine art territory. There are many more early American tattooers who have contributed to the American revolution that we will speak about in the future.

America didn’t invent tattooing, but it industrialized it. Machines replace hand-tapping—faster, less painful, more accessible. By the ‘90s and 2000s, MTV and reality shows like Miami Ink turn it mainstream. Suddenly, it’s not just bikers and sailors—it’s soccer moms and CEOs. Polynesia gave tattooing soul; America gave it hustle.

Ed Hardy 1976

Effort In, Effort Out:

Back in the day, getting a tattoo was a commitment. The Polynesians bled for weeks. Even early American tattoos meant sitting through hand-poked sessions or crude machines that buzzed like a pissed-off hornet. Now? Electric machines numbing creams, and laser removal if you regret that drunken butterfly. The effort’s shrunk, and it’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s democratized ink—anyone can get a piece, you are free to create anything and everything, shit you want a dagger on your face at 17? You got it. On the other, it’s diluted the grit. Walk into a shop today, and you’ve got 18-year-olds with zero skin in the game getting TikTok-trend tats they’ll laser off by 30.

This shift screws with careers too. Once, tattoos screamed “outsider”—you’d never see a lawyer with sleeves. Now, they’re so common that the stigma’s half-dead, but it’s not gone. Corporate America still side-eyes anything too bold, while creative fields eat it up. The culture’s split: part rebellion, part conformity. And the lack of effort? It’s made tattooing disposable for some—a fashion statement, not a life mark. To me, the culture has been greatly watered down. Everyone and their mom has access to equipment to take a shot at tattooing, as they should. Unfortunately, it has caused an epidemic of cheap, shitty, scratcher artists who disrespect the craft and give people a bad taste in their mouth for tattoos and tattooed people altogether. I live in a town of 75,000 people and there are 40 shops here. Now everyone has to start somewhere, but the explosion of this craft has caused a lot of people who don't give a fuck about tattooing at all, to pick it up. The tv glamorization has taught everyone that it's " super cool" to be a tattoo artist. And you know what? THEY ARE RIGHT. Being a tattooer is badass and i absolutely love it. That being said, to tattoo well is hard af, and it takes time to learn. Today we have people who pick up a machine, do a bunch of garbage tattoos that their friends pump their nuts up on, they spend 6 months doing that and then open their own studio as a "professional tattoo artist", which couldn't be farther from the truth. It is up to us as mentors and stewards of the craft to do our best to educate and make sure our people are growing and doing well. Us who have been doing this a while ( im a short timer, been tattoing almost 7 yrs) have a responsibility to help the next gen, because what we have rn is the blind leading the blind. Its been that way for years but its HUGE now.

Where We’re At:

Today, tattooing’s a billion-dollar industry, but it’s caught in the same corporate trap as everything else. Big brands rape the craft with watered down shitty products who's only purpose is to make money. It’s an abomination. The art’s roots—Polynesia’s sacred rites, the Japanese tattoo underground, America’s raw defiance—are buried under mass production and Instagram likes.

But i think people are waking up, demanding real craftsmanship. It’s a fight against the machine, one client at a time. Tattooing’s history teaches us resilience—those early cultures didn’t bow to pain or empire, and neither should we. If we push back, educate, and reclaim the craft, we can make it mean something again.

-Ross