文身记

通身完美无瑕固然娇好无比，而那些混合着血与色彩的印记突地闯入眼帘时，却又是那样地触目惊心，令人半是恐惧，半是着迷

Tattoos didn't spring up with the dawn of biker gangs and rock 'n' roll bands.1 They've been
around for a long time and had many different meanings over the course of history. Let's sketch out some interesting anecdotes about tattoos for you now.2

How tattoos were created and developed?

For years, scientists believed that Egyptians and Nubians3 were the first people to tattoo their bodies. Then, in 1991, a mummy was discovered, dating back to the Bronze Age of about 3,300 B.C.."The Iceman," as the specimen was dubbed, had several markings on his body,4 including a cross on the inside of his knee and lines on his ankle and back. It is believed these tattoos were made in a curative effort.

Being so advanced, the Egyptians reportedly spread the practice of tattooing throughout the world. The pyramid-building third and fourth dynasties of Egypt developed international nations with Crete, Greece, Persia and Arabia.5 The art of tattooing stretched out all the way to Southeast Asia by 2,000 B.C..

Around the same time, the Japanese became interested in the art but only for its decorative attributes, as opposed to magical ones.6 The Japanese tattoo artists were the undisputed masters. Their use of colors, perspective, and imaginative designs gave the practice a whole new angle. During the first millennium A.D., Japan adopted Chinese culture in many aspects and confined tattooing to branding wrongdoers.7

In the Balkans, the Thracians8 had a different use for the craft. Aristocrats, according to Herodotus9, used it to show the world their social status.

Although early Europeans dabbled with tattooing, they truly rediscovered the art form when the world exploration of the post-Renaissance made them seek out new cultures. It was their meeting with Polynesian10 that introduced them to tattooing. The word, in fact, is derived from the Polynesian word tattau, which means "to mark."

Why tattoo?

Most of the early uses of tattoos were ornamental. However, a number of civilizations had practical applications for this craft. The Goths, a tribe of Germanic barbarians famous for pillaging Roman settlements,11 used tattoos to mark their slaves. Romans did the same with slaves and criminals.

In Tahiti, tattoos were a rite of passage and told the history of the person's life.12 Reaching adulthood, boys got one tattoo to commemorate the event. Men were marked with another style when they got married.

Later, tattoos became the souvenir of choice for globetrotting sailors.13 Whenever they would reach an exotic locale, they would get a new tattoo to mark the occasion. A dragon was a famous style that meant the sailor had reached a "China station." At first, sailors would spend their free time on the ship tattooing themselves and their mates. Soon after, tattoo parlors14 were set up in the area, surrounding ports worldwide.

In the middle of the 19th century, police officials believed that half of the criminal underworld15 in New York City had tattoos. Port areas were renowned for being rough places full of sailors that were guilty of some crime or another. This is most likely how tattoos got such a bad reputation and became associated with rebels and delinquents16.

How did they do it?

In the Americas, native tribes used simple pricking17 to tattoo their bodies or faces. In California, specifically, some groups injected color into the scratches. Some northern tribes living in and around the Arctic Circle (mostly Inuit) made punctures with a needle and ran a thread coated with soot through the skin.18 The South Pacific community would tap pigment into the pricked skin using a small rake-like instrument.19

In New Zealand, the native, using a small bone-cutting tool, would carve intricate shallow grooves on the face and buttocks,20 and infuse them with color. Thanks to trading with Europeans, they were able to use a metal apparatus and apply more traditional puncture methods.

In 1891, an American by the name of Samuel O'Reilly patented the modern tattoo machine. This hand-held contraption21, as we know it today, makes a needle vibrate up and down very rapidly (approximately several hundred vibrations per minute). The needle penetrates the skin around one millimeter in depth and injects ink into the skin at the dermis22 level.

Pop stars have them, as do lawyers, professional athletes, soldiers, and mechanics ?there's no social stigma attached to people with tattoos. Today, tattoos are a fashion statement more than a means of intimidation. And it's only natural that people want to discover how this trend started.

Samuel O'Reilly was the first famous contemporary tattoo artist. He set up a shop in New York's Chatham Square and was very popular in his time. Tattoos were all the rage, all the way to the financial crash of 1929.23 They became trendy in America again around World War II, with the introduction of new designs like cartoon characters. Tattooing made another leap for the mainstream in the '70s and '80s, when celebrities began sporting24 them.

In the last decade, the policy of global acceptance and worldwide communication has not only made tattoos popular, but also omnipresent25. With 5,000 years of tattooing tradition, nothing indicates that this is a vanishing fad26.

1． spring up：涌现； the dawn: 开端，起始；biker:<美>骑摩托车的人（尤指属某一团伙者）。

2． sketch out：简要地叙述；anecdote：轶事，奇闻。

3． Nubian：努比亚人，生活在古代东北非的一个地区，即今埃及南部和苏丹北部，古代努比亚人曾统治整个埃及并创造了灿烂的文化。

4． 这一被命名为“冰人”的标本身上有几处记号。

5．Crete: 克利特岛(位于地中海东部,属希腊）；Persia：波斯，今伊朗；Arabia：阿拉伯半岛。

6．日本人对这种艺术形式也渐渐萌生了兴趣，但仅仅是针对其装饰性，而非其神秘色彩。

7． 日本人在很多方面吸收了中国文化，规定文身只能被用来给违法犯罪者作标记。

8．Thracian/#8re!1j2n/：色雷斯人，巴尔干半岛最早的居民之一，曾创造过独特而璀璨的文化，如今已消亡。古罗马时期著名的奴隶起义领袖斯巴达克斯就是色雷斯人。

9． Herodotus：古希腊历史学家希罗多德（约484 - 425B.C.），被称为“历史之父”，所著的《历史》为西方第一部历史著作。

10． Polynesian：波利尼西亚人，指太平洋岛屿居民。

11． the Goths: 哥特族（日耳曼族的一支，在３至５世纪侵入罗马帝国）； barbarian: 未开化的人，野蛮人；pillage: （尤指战争中的）掠夺。

12． Tahiti: 塔希提岛，位于南太平洋；rite of passage:通过礼仪（指为人生进入一个新阶段，如出生、成年等举行的仪式）。

13. souvenir/#s%:v2ni2/: 纪念品；of choice : 特别的；globetrot:周游世界[globe-trotter的逆构］。

14. parlor: <美>（接待顾客的）店堂。

15. underworld: 下流社会，以犯罪活动为生的人们。

16. delinquent: 违法者。

17. pricking: 刺，戳。

18. 生活在北极圈内及其附近的一些北方部落的人（主要是因纽特人）用针刺破皮肤，再把染成炭黑色的线穿进去。Inuit：生活在北极地区的因纽特人， 即爱斯基摩人； soot: 炭黑色。

19. pigment: 颜料； rake-like: 齿叉形的。

20. bone-cutting: 用骨头削成的；groove: 沟，纹（道）；buttocks：臀部。

21. hand-held: 手持的，便携式的； contraption：装置。

22. dermis: 真皮。

23.直到1929年经济危机爆发前，文身一直十分风靡。all the rage: <口>风靡一时的事物，时尚。

24. sport: <口> 惹人注目地穿戴。

25. omnipresent: 无所不在的。

26. fad: （穿着、行为、言谈等方面）一时的风尚。