Oldest tattoo

Pazyryk mummy tattoo In my post "Reindeer Goddess, Axis Mundi, & Axis Shifts" I began my journey to blog my findings regarding a reindeer goddess. Since then, I have come across reports of amazing finds throughout the EurAsian Steppes. The first picture on this page is a copy of a tattoo on the shoulder of a well preserved female mummy found by archeologist Natalia Polos'mak in a kurgan in Pazyryk. Discovered in 1995, 7,500 feet above sea level, the mummy was named the Ice Princess or The…

Princess Ukok shoulder tattoo detail, frozen scythian female mummy (5th century BC) found at the Ukok Plateau, Altai, Russia

Pazyryk Ice Maiden Tattoo...omg already?

AS IT sits just under the skin, body art is often lost as a corpse rots away, but in rare cases it remains perfectly preserved thousands of years after death.

Kate writes: “I thought I’d send you a photo of my tattoo. I guess it fits into the ‘anthropology’ category although I’m actually a vet (I’ve seen exactly one deer in a professional capacity since I graduated). It’s a copy of a tattoo found on the Pazyryk mummy, a 2,400 year old Scythian, possibly a […]

How did a 106-year-old woman in the rural Filipino mountains become one of the most famous tattoo artists in the world? We travel north to Kalinga to meet the ButBut tribe—and discovers an ancient tradition indelibly inked into our culture