If tattoos are prone to fading within a single human lifetime, imagine the wear-and-tear on the tattoos of 1,200-year-old mummies.
An international team of researchers has, for the first time, used lasers to reveal tattoos on mummies from Peru. Using this technique, detailed in a January 13 study published in the journal PNAS, researchers uncovered beautifully intricate designs, and (literally) shed light on the intricate tattooing practices of the ancient Chancay culture. Their findings reveal a higher level of artistic skill in pre-Columbian Peru than previously thought.
Tattoos have existed as a form of artistic expression for over 5,000 years, with the oldest example belonging to the famous Otzi the Iceman, who died in the Alps between Austria and Italy around 3300 BCE. However, because the remains of ancient soft tissue are rare and tattoos fade and bleed with time—a condition that’s obviously worsened as a body decays after death—archaeologists have few opportunities to study the ancient art form. In the opportunities that do present themselves, researchers have historically used infrared imaging to analyze the design, which still fails to uncover tattoos’ finer details, according to the study.
The recent team used a technique called laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF), which uses lasers to reveal details within soft tissue, to study the tattoos on Peruvian mummies. Paleontologists have used LSF for years to study dinosaur remains, according to Science Alert, but this marks the first time the technique has been used to analyze ancient tattoos on mummified human remains—and the results were fantastic.
“We basically turn skin into a light bulb,” said Thomas G. Kaye of the nonprofit Foundation for Scientific Advancement in Arizona, who participated in the study, as reported by the Associated Press. In other words, the researchers used lasers to make non-tattooed skin glow in sharp contrast to tattooed skin, even revealing delicate ink designs invisible to the naked eye.
The researchers, including a scientist from the José Faustino Sánchez Carrión National University in Peru, studied over 100 approximately 1,200-year-old mummified human remains belonging to the Chancay culture. The Chancay were pre-Columbian people who lived along the central coast of modern-day Peru between around 900 and 1533 CE, according to the study. Now recognized for their textiles, they were ultimately absorbed into the Incan Empire.
Though most of the tattoos on the Chancay mummies were “amorphous patches with poorly defined edges,” some of the designs had lines between 0.0039 and 0.0079 inches (0.1 to 0.2 millimeters) thick, the researchers wrote in the study. These details “reflect the fact that each ink dot was placed deliberately by hand with great skill, creating a variety of exquisite geometric and zoomorphic patterns,” they added. “We can assume that this technique involved a pointed object finer than a standard #12 modern tattoo needle, probably a single cactus needle or sharpened animal bone based on known materials available to the artists.”
The researchers then compared the tattoo designs with other Chancay material culture, including pottery, textiles, and rock art, and determined the tattoos to be the culture’s “most intricate art” found to date.
“The study therefore reveals higher levels of artistic complexity in pre-Columbian Peru than previously appreciated, which expands the degree of artistic development found in South America at this time,” the researchers explained.
Perhaps this first successful use of LSF to study tattoos on mummies will lead to the discovery of more ancient designs that will also give modern tattoos a run for their money.