The practice of tattooing means different things in different cultures. In early practice, decoration appears to have been the most common motive for tattooing, and that still holds true today. In some cultures, tattoos served as identification of the wearer’s rank or status in a group. For example, the early Romans tattooed slaves and criminals. Tahitian tattoos served as rites of passage, telling the history of the wearer’s life. Boys reaching manhood received one tattoo to mark the occasion, while men had another style done when they married. Sailors traveling to exotic foreign lands began to collect tattoos as souvenirs of their journeys (a dragon showed that the seaman had served on a China station), and tattoo parlors sprang up in port cities around the globe.

Kings and commoners. Sailors and prisoners. Tribesmen and sweethearts. All have shared one thing: the art of the tattoo.

Evidence from ancient Egypt, Greenland, Siberia, and New Zealand shows how truly global the tattooer’s art is — and how old. In fact, tattooing had existed for thousands of years before England’s Captain Cook encountered it in the South Pacific in 1769. Merchant and naval seamen soon spread the art to Europe and America. But while its meaning has varied from people to people and from place to place, tattooing has most often served as a sign of social status, as a mark of one’s passage through life, or simply as a way to beautify the body.

Once regarded in the West as frightening and repulsive, the tattoo has enjoyed great popularity in our own culture in recent years. Everywhere we look today — movies, advertisements, television-are signs that people of all walks of life appreciate and practice the art of the tattoo.