Symbolic Nature of Tattoos

Alright Professor, I'm going to use this blog to skip back to the 6th week post:

After my pictures from Flickr.com, I was a little intrigued at the origin of symbolic tattoos (spurred on by Professor Smith's commentary on the post). With a little bit of research, I pieced together various aspects on the history and purpose of tattoos in the past that by far have a major theme of religious significance.

I was definietly surprised as to how far back the history of tattoos traced back. In 1991, a +5000 year old Ice Man was discovered well preserved and had somewhere between 51 and 57 tattoos all over his body, proving that the practice isn't exactly new. An Egyptian preistess was discovered in 1891 with geometric tattoos thought to be for ritual purposes. Particularily in Japan, Polynesia, India, and Thailand, the use of tattoos was believed to hold supernatural or spiritual power. Many other purposes for tattoos served as status or marital markers, simple decoration, or for battle purposes. In battle or hunting, many warriors used tattoos for protection, courage, to become one with the enemy (animal or human), or as stories from their past experiences. Further along the historical timeline I read how Christian crusaders tattooed a cross on their hands as a request for a Christian burial if they were killed in battle. Religiously, for all religions, I found tattooing religious symbols on the body was a way of openly declaring and expressing one's faith permanently.

Throughout all of this reading, I kept thinking back to Geertz's definition, beginning with: "A system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men...". For the majority of purposes of tattoos holding some form of religious relatability, I found them to represent this "system of symbols" as so described by Geertz. Afterall, thats all tattoos really are.