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Essay on American Anthropologist
Tattoos have always had a deep meaning for humanity. The oldest extant tattooed person was a man who died during the Bronze Age 5,000 years ago; since then, body art has survived across different cultures and different times Greene, Gerald and Caroline. 1974). Today, it flourishes. Tattoo artists exist in every major city around the world, their tools manufactured from surgical steel.
As a sociological phenomenon, the tattoo is an expression both of one's individuality as well as one's membership of larger social groups. Men and women of prehistory tattooed themselves for many of the same reasons we hold today; the earliest tattoos originated in cave paintings and had deep social and religious meanings. Prehistoric tattoos signified tribe membership as well as humanity's place in the scheme of nature. Many patterns related to supernatural elements whose protection the wearer sought to invoke.
Iban ancestors used tattoos to derive a direct shamanistic power from the gods, spirits and elements. Even today, The Iban believes their tattoos to be a link between the material and the spiritual realms; that one cannot be "seen" by the gods without one's tattoos. Today, tattooing has become a permanent form of self-expression in an increasingly homogeneous world.Oriental secret society tattoos like those of the triads and the yakuza originate less in clan or tribe association, but in a lack of them.
Influenced heavily by Confucianism, which considers tattoos to be a defilement of the body and a mark of impurity, Eastern societies continue to view tattoos - even pop culture designs - with hostility. In Japan, for example, the Tokugawa government of the Edo period (1600- 1828) marked criminals with tattoos, thus creating a new class of outcasts that included many ronin (samurais without masters) who would eventually become the yakuza, and whose tattoos would obtain cult importance.....
