Artifacts testify to tattoos 5,000 years ago
Ancient tattoo tools are hard to find or even recognize as skin drawing tools. But new microscopic studies of two turkey bones with pointed ends show that Native Americans used these items for tattoos from about 5,520 to 3,620 years ago.
According to archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolfe of the Tennessee Department of Archeology in Nashville, these pigment-stained bones are the world’s oldest known tattooing tools. The find suggests that the tattooing tradition of Native Americans in eastern North America dates back millennia earlier than previously thought. Iceman Ötzi, who lived in Europe about 5,250 years ago, displays the oldest known tattoos, but researchers have not found any tools used to create Iceman’s tattoos.
A 1985 excavation unearthed turkey bones and other elements of a possible tattoo set in a human burial pit in the Fernvale area of Tennessee, researchers report in the June Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports. According to Deter-Wolfe’s team, the lesions at and near the tips of two turkey bones resemble the characteristic wear and tear previously seen on experimental tattoo instruments made from deer bones. In this study, tattooed lines on fresh pieces of pigskin were obtained by a series of punctures with tools, the tips of which were coated with homemade ink. The experimental tattoo left ink residues a few millimeters from the tips of the instruments, the same pattern can be seen with red and black pigment residues on Fernvale instruments.
Scientists say that two turkey wing bones found in the same Fernvale grave show microscopic wear and tear and pigment debris, which likely resulted from the application of pigment during tattooing. The pigment-stained seashells in the grave could contain solutions that tattooists had dipped them into, writes Sceince magazine.
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