World's oldest tattoos were made of soot

[Soylent Brice]

For those inclined to put ink to flesh, modern tattoo parlours offer dizzying arrays of dyes – mercury-containing reds, manganese purples, even pigments that glow in the dark.

Getting inked wasn't always quite so complicated, however. A new analysis concludes that the world's oldest tattoos were etched in soot.

Belonging to Ötzi the 5300 year old Tyrolean iceman, the simple tattoos may have served a medicinal purpose, not a decorative one, says Maria Anna Pabst, a researcher at the Medical University of Graz, Austria, who trained optical and electron microscopes on biopsies of Otzi's preserved flesh.

*snip*

A close look at his tattooed skin revealed numerous fine particles, interspersed with elongated crystals. Chemical analysis indicated that the particles were made of double-bonded carbon atoms found in soot, while the crystals were made of silicate. His tattoo-free skin, on the other hand, showed no trace of soot particles. Ötzi's "ink" could have been scraped off silicate-containing rocks surrounding a fireplace, Pabst says.

more: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17469-worlds-oldest-tattoos-were-made-of-soot.html




edit: to add pic.

[undeterred]

1. ok, second look

At first I thought it said: "World's oldest tattoos were made of snot"

[Soylent Brice]

2. *snort*

[get the red out]

3. Me too!