The world of body art

Throughout the world, tattoos are everywhere, for many different reasons, for different cultures. They started out becoming popular in the 1950s and started to spread. While viewed as tabu, and today have spread to a very popular form of art.

One of the older forms of this is Celtic tattoos. These tattoos can be associated with the Celts, mainly in Ireland and Great Britain. One of the more famous ones is the Celtic knot, a knot which is meant to be an unending knot, or eternity. It dates back as far as the seventh century.

However tattoos go farther back than this. The oldest known tattoos appeared on a man who has been named "Otzi." The Ice Man. Found in the 1990s in Europe, his body dates back to 3,300 B.C. and he had many tattoos on his body, however these are not so much associated with symbolism, but with spirituality and healing.

With piercings there is also a rich history. Piercings originated in the Middle East, and then spread to India. In India, it is common to have a nose piercing, especially for woman and in the left nostril, which is associated with fertility in some cultures.

Within my own experiences, I have found in many other non-west cultures, body art remains slightly tabu. With previous students from Japan, many didn't have any piercings including ears, and were soon brought to a tattoo parlor by other friends to get their first of what has become in some circumstances many piercings.

While in Russia, I was looked at strangely for my piercings, and didn't meet anybody with any piercings, and very few woman with ear piercings.

When calling something "modern" or "tabu" it is important to take a look at which side of the spectrum you stand on.