# Traditional tattoos from lost traditions



## Delvo

Carlos Mencia once had a particularly light-skinned white guy in his audience stand up and show him his tattoo, and responded "Oooh, a tribal armband! What 'tribe' are you from, 'Chad'?". (His actual name hilariously turned out to be even whiter than that, something like Blake.) He was making fun of the people who get trendy conformist "tribal" tattoos that are from Pacific islands even though most of the people wearing them aren't.

If I'd been in "Chad"'s position, my answer would have been "Saxon!" rather than just embarassment at being caught with a pretentious trendy "traditional" thing from somebody else's traditions. ("English" and "German" would be equally accurate but don't sound so "tribal" in the modern language.) But then, I wouldn't have been caught like that anyway, because the _right_ kind of tribal tattoo for me wouldn't have looked like that anyway... or would it?

I'm told that Julius Caesar wrote about the tattoos on the Germanic and Celtic people he fought in Gaul, but I haven't seen any drawings of what those looked like and don't know whether anybody else wrote descriptions of them... or what they represented or were used for. Where can I find translated quotes from him (or anybody else) on this subject, or drawings based on those quotes?

The Iceman's patterns of little dots, "X"s, and "+"s seem to have been medicinal because they were put where his skeleton showed signs of joint trouble, but he's too ancient to be classified as Germanic, Celtic or anything else in particular, so that has nothing to do with more "tribe"-specific traditions that were lost after Romanization or Christianization.

Is there any way to find out what such tattoos would have been like?


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## Wybren

I can have a look in my anthropology books for you Delvo, but I am pretty sure that other than what is found on Otzi and some bog bodies, there is very little to give a person clues as to what symbols they may have used as tattoo's. Most of the Celtic patterns people use today are ideas taken from the Book of Kells, or other old patterns found on celtic artifacts.


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## Delvo

I'm not necessarily looking for something "other than what is found on... some bog bodies". I've never seen a "bog body". What's on them? And what exactly did Julius Caesar say about the tattoos he saw if it wasn't a visual description of the tattoos?


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## TheEndIsNigh

Brigantean for me Delvo. 


Once played a druid in a play from this tribe, so I'm almost an honorary member


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## Urlik

here is a translation of Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico

I am probably of the Atrebates tribe (on my mother's side)


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## Wybren

Lindow man had some tattoo's but they are unclear, The best mummified tattoo's I have seen are on a mummy from Siberia (Pazyryk) though that is not much help when looking for Celtic patterns.

There are some coins that are thought to depict celtic facial tattoos and symbols though


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## MontyCircus

Delvo said:


> Carlos Mencia once had a particularly light-skinned white guy in his audience stand up and show him his tattoo



There's no way in hell that show is still on...is it?

A bit off-topic, but here is a pretty funny website about incorrect Chinese character tatoos:  Hanzi Smatter ä¸€çŸ¥åŠè§£


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## Delvo

Urlik said:


> here is a translation of Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico
> 
> I am probably of the Atrebates tribe (on my mother's side)


Thanks! It's long and doesn't contain the word "tattoo" or any version of it, so any descriptions of tattoos won't be easy to find if they're in there at all, but I just might read the whole thing sometime anyway, for reasons other than looking for the tattoo descriptions.


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## Urlik

try searching for the various tribe names to see if the tattoos are mentioned in the descriptions of the tribe.


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## BookStop

No mention about the design though - I'm guessing he never specifically said.

Military Tattoo Designs - Part 1 | TattooSymbol.com



> In 50 BC, Julius Caesar wrote in his _Commentaries on the Gallic Wars_ that during his campaigns in Britain in 55 and 54 BC he observed that “all Britons paint themselves with woad, which turns the skin a bluish-green color; hence their appearance is all the more horrific in battle”.  While Caesar uses the word paint, later historians speak specifically of tattoos and modern historians believe that the warriors who faced Caesar were in fact tattooed.  In these earliest of references to tattoos and military action the emphasis is on intimidation.  Caesar reinforces that thought by describing them as _horrific_, not simply blue.  The purpose of the tattoos from the viewpoint of the Britons themselves is not recorded.  If their intent was to daunt their foe, then they were successful.


 
I thought early tattoos were usually based on runes, like Celtic knots and whatnot having specific meanings relating to nature and what feelings nature represents.


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## Delvo

The words "woad", "paint", "color", and "blue" are also not found in the file I downloaded. The whole thing is about the political and martial interactions of the tribes, so tribe name searches just stop multiple times in pretty much every paragraph. (It's 129 pages now, but I use small margins and a dense font; it was over 200 in its original form.) Skimming through it by reading the first line or two of each paragraph to see what the paragraph would be about, I've found one section where he discusses the Germanic and Celtic cultures for a couple of pages, in the lower 40s (the rest being entirely political and military stuff), but stopped for now at page 50. The cultural insights in those couple of pages are interesting, as are the wild animal descriptions that follow, but none of it mentions tattoos or skin-painting in that section. I have more pages to go today, but I've begun to suspect that it's not really in there.


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## Wybren

I just read an article on Wiley interscience about the use of Woad and apparently it is believed now that woad was not used. I have the article if you were interested in reading it and dont have access to Wiley.


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## Delvo

I've never heard of a Wiley and don't know where it is, but if Julius said it was woad and it wasn't, then what was it?


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## Wybren

Upon re reading the article, they say that the product used in tattooing was inconclusive, it could have been woad, or some other thing but as to lack of evidence they can not be 100 percent certain. So I appologise for misreading the article.

However 
Here are some bits from the article as I cant post it all here, nor place a link because of the need for a subscription.
Its from the Oxford Journal of Archaelogy 
Title is 
WOAD, TATTOOING AND IDENTITY IN LATER IRON AGE AND EARLY ROMAN BRITAIN



> _Some Classical authors suggest that the Britons used tattoos, body paints and dyes. Within their writings are clues concerning which pigments were used, how they were applied, and who used them. If it were not for these accounts we would have little idea that the native Britons practised body painting at all: theirs is the only 'true' evidence we have. However, we should be aware that Classical accounts of 'barbarians' and their practices were often exaggerated to emphasize their 'otherness'; Stewart (1995) has suggested that Classical authors are likely to have used certain stock literary topoi or stereotypic themes to emphasize British barbarity and lack of civilization, and body painting is possibly one of these. As Jones (1987) reminds us, for the Greeks and Romans, to be tattooed was degrading and was used on runaway or delinquent slaves._
> _Caesar reports that the custom of covering the body with vitrum, later interpreted as woad (i.e. woad-derived indigo), applied to all Britons and not just to the civilized inhabitants of Kent (De Bello Gallico V, xiv). However, some (e.g. Pyatt et al. 1991) argue that had Caesar encountered other blue-painted warriors in battle, he would surely have mentioned them each time. This is not necessarily true. Caesar may have felt that, having made his initial description of the Britons, there was no further need to describe every new group he met._
> _There are also the inherent problems of translation to take into account beyond the possible mistranslation of vitrum as woad, something which dates from the sixteenth century when the plant was a popular source of blue dye (Thirsk 1985). Vitrum also means 'glass' or 'crystal' in Latin, suggesting that vitrum is crystalline. Caesar's report that 'all the Britons dye themselves with woad, which produces a blue colour' is a translation from the Latin: 'Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem'. A better rendering, therefore, would perhaps be 'dye themselves with glazes', indicating body paint, or perhaps 'infect themselves (or 'work into themselves') with glass', implying that glass was used to prick the skin for tattooing. This latter translation may even refer to a description of a scarification ritual._




And




> *Pigments and plants*
> 
> _Our second source of evidence for tattooing or body painting can be found in the archaeological traces of plants such as woad or other potential vegetable pigments. The earliest example of woad in Britain was found at Dragonby. The yellow dye, weld, was also found at the same site. As woad is not indigenous to this country, van der Veen et al. (1993) suggested that it was deliberately introduced and cultivated for its blue dye. A total of 18 fragments (a mixture of uncharred whole seeds and fragments of seed pods) were found in a later Iron Age pit; however, as the sampling was described as 'unusual and outstanding for its time' (van der Veen 1996, 197), it may be that woad existed on other sites but has been overlooked. Indeed, at the turn of the century, Plowright (1901–2) mentioned that the unpublished excavation of a barrow at Sheen, near Hartington in north Staffordshire, had yielded a considerable amount of woad-indigo in lumps and powder; however, these have not survived and no proper account of the find has been made. Plowright suggested that the barrow belonged to a woad dyer._
> _It is likely, however, that whilst macrofossil remains of woad have been overlooked in the archaeological record through non-recognition or inadequate sampling, there are good reasons why such remains would be scarce. The parts of the plant used for dyeing (i.e. the leaves) are only likely to survive under exceptional preservational conditions, such as the waterlogged occupation deposits in tenth-century York, for example (Tomlinson 1985; Kenward and Hall 1995). Fruits and seeds (as found at Dragonby) are indirect evidence for the use of the plant in dyeing and rarely survive. Moreover, the pollen of woad is indistinguishable from that of other members of the Cruciferae family (Allan Hall, pers. comm.), of which the humble cabbage is also a member._
> *Preserved bodies*
> 
> _Our third source of evidence for tattooing and body painting lies in traces of pigment on the skin of bog bodies. The warriors found preserved in Siberian permafrost at Pazyryk (Rudenko 1970) give us some idea of what might once have been a common British medium of decoration._
> _The translation of vitrum as woad was questioned by Pyatt et al. (1991), who examined Lindow Man. Their results suggested that clay-based copper and other pigments were applied to the body (Pyatt et al. 1991, 61). These results, together with the absence of any archaeological evidence for woad in the Iron Age (until the excavation of Dragonby a few years later), led the authors to suggest that woad was not the origin of the blue paint to which Caesar referred._
> _In their search for a copper pigment on the skin of Lindow Man, Cowell and Craddock, in a later paper (1995, 75), suggested that 'the amount of copper on the skin of Lindow Man is not of sufficient magnitude to provide convincing evidence that the copper was deliberately applied as paint, especially as the epidermis, the original surface of the skin, which would have carried the putative paint, is lost'. So the question of whether Lindow Man indulged in body painting remains open._
> 
> *Coins and facial tattoos*
> 
> _The fourth strand of evidence comes from coins. In 1963, Thomas (1963, fig. 15 and appendix II) examined the depictions of human faces with tattooed cheeks and necks found in early Gallic coinage dating generally within the later third and second centuries BC (see Fig. 2). The various tribes to which the coins are attributed lie roughly in a broad area from the Paris basin to Normandy and Brittany. Although it is possible that some of the marks could be symbols added to an otherwise blank space, he remarks that 'collectively there are enough examples to leave little doubt that a cheek mark of some kind on a Celt was nothing very odd, at least in north-west Gaul' (ibid., 92). Thomas believes that it was likely that facial and probably corporeal tattoos of this nature were employed in southern Britain at the same time; however, images of facial tattoos on British coins have not been found._




I am also attaching the drawing of the facial tattoos from the coins








hope this helps with information for you.


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## Wybren

Upon re reading the article, they say that the product used in tattooing was inconclusive, it could have been woad, or some other thing but as to lack of evidence they can not be 100 percent certain. So I appologise for misreading the article.

However 
Here are some bits from the article as I cant post it all here, nor place a link because of the need for a subscription.
Its from the Oxford Journal of Archaelogy 
Title is 
WOAD, TATTOOING AND IDENTITY IN LATER IRON AGE AND EARLY ROMAN BRITAIN



> _Some Classical authors suggest that the Britons used tattoos, body paints and dyes. Within their writings are clues concerning which pigments were used, how they were applied, and who used them. If it were not for these accounts we would have little idea that the native Britons practised body painting at all: theirs is the only 'true' evidence we have. However, we should be aware that Classical accounts of 'barbarians' and their practices were often exaggerated to emphasize their 'otherness'; Stewart (1995) has suggested that Classical authors are likely to have used certain stock literary topoi or stereotypic themes to emphasize British barbarity and lack of civilization, and body painting is possibly one of these. As Jones (1987) reminds us, for the Greeks and Romans, to be tattooed was degrading and was used on runaway or delinquent slaves._
> _Caesar reports that the custom of covering the body with vitrum, later interpreted as woad (i.e. woad-derived indigo), applied to all Britons and not just to the civilized inhabitants of Kent (De Bello Gallico V, xiv). However, some (e.g. Pyatt et al. 1991) argue that had Caesar encountered other blue-painted warriors in battle, he would surely have mentioned them each time. This is not necessarily true. Caesar may have felt that, having made his initial description of the Britons, there was no further need to describe every new group he met._
> _There are also the inherent problems of translation to take into account beyond the possible mistranslation of vitrum as woad, something which dates from the sixteenth century when the plant was a popular source of blue dye (Thirsk 1985). Vitrum also means 'glass' or 'crystal' in Latin, suggesting that vitrum is crystalline. Caesar's report that 'all the Britons dye themselves with woad, which produces a blue colour' is a translation from the Latin: 'Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem'. A better rendering, therefore, would perhaps be 'dye themselves with glazes', indicating body paint, or perhaps 'infect themselves (or 'work into themselves') with glass', implying that glass was used to prick the skin for tattooing. This latter translation may even refer to a description of a scarification ritual._


And




> *Pigments and plants*
> 
> _Our second source of evidence for tattooing or body painting can be found in the archaeological traces of plants such as woad or other potential vegetable pigments. The earliest example of woad in Britain was found at Dragonby. The yellow dye, weld, was also found at the same site. As woad is not indigenous to this country, van der Veen et al. (1993) suggested that it was deliberately introduced and cultivated for its blue dye. A total of 18 fragments (a mixture of uncharred whole seeds and fragments of seed pods) were found in a later Iron Age pit; however, as the sampling was described as 'unusual and outstanding for its time' (van der Veen 1996, 197), it may be that woad existed on other sites but has been overlooked. Indeed, at the turn of the century, Plowright (1901–2) mentioned that the unpublished excavation of a barrow at Sheen, near Hartington in north Staffordshire, had yielded a considerable amount of woad-indigo in lumps and powder; however, these have not survived and no proper account of the find has been made. Plowright suggested that the barrow belonged to a woad dyer._
> _It is likely, however, that whilst macrofossil remains of woad have been overlooked in the archaeological record through non-recognition or inadequate sampling, there are good reasons why such remains would be scarce. The parts of the plant used for dyeing (i.e. the leaves) are only likely to survive under exceptional preservational conditions, such as the waterlogged occupation deposits in tenth-century York, for example (Tomlinson 1985; Kenward and Hall 1995). Fruits and seeds (as found at Dragonby) are indirect evidence for the use of the plant in dyeing and rarely survive. Moreover, the pollen of woad is indistinguishable from that of other members of the Cruciferae family (Allan Hall, pers. comm.), of which the humble cabbage is also a member._
> *Preserved bodies*
> 
> _Our third source of evidence for tattooing and body painting lies in traces of pigment on the skin of bog bodies. The warriors found preserved in Siberian permafrost at Pazyryk (Rudenko 1970) give us some idea of what might once have been a common British medium of decoration._
> _The translation of vitrum as woad was questioned by Pyatt et al. (1991), who examined Lindow Man. Their results suggested that clay-based copper and other pigments were applied to the body (Pyatt et al. 1991, 61). These results, together with the absence of any archaeological evidence for woad in the Iron Age (until the excavation of Dragonby a few years later), led the authors to suggest that woad was not the origin of the blue paint to which Caesar referred._
> _In their search for a copper pigment on the skin of Lindow Man, Cowell and Craddock, in a later paper (1995, 75), suggested that 'the amount of copper on the skin of Lindow Man is not of sufficient magnitude to provide convincing evidence that the copper was deliberately applied as paint, especially as the epidermis, the original surface of the skin, which would have carried the putative paint, is lost'. So the question of whether Lindow Man indulged in body painting remains open._
> 
> *Coins and facial tattoos*
> 
> _The fourth strand of evidence comes from coins. In 1963, Thomas (1963, fig. 15 and appendix II) examined the depictions of human faces with tattooed cheeks and necks found in early Gallic coinage dating generally within the later third and second centuries BC (see Fig. 2). The various tribes to which the coins are attributed lie roughly in a broad area from the Paris basin to Normandy and Brittany. Although it is possible that some of the marks could be symbols added to an otherwise blank space, he remarks that 'collectively there are enough examples to leave little doubt that a cheek mark of some kind on a Celt was nothing very odd, at least in north-west Gaul' (ibid., 92). Thomas believes that it was likely that facial and probably corporeal tattoos of this nature were employed in southern Britain at the same time; however, images of facial tattoos on British coins have not been found._


I am also attaching the drawing of the facial tattoos from the coins








hope this helps with information for you.


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## Delvo

It looks like all of the evidence is about Kelts, not Germanic people... which makes it only partially or indirectly applicable to me, but can also be taken as a sign that it is accurate. In "The Gallic Wars", Julius clearly depicts the Germanic people as the more primitive and alien ones, so if these descriptions were just meant to emphasize that as your quote suggests, then he would have applied it more to them than to the Kelts, not the other way around.

This also reminds me of the "Blue Spaniards" who were mentioned in the first few episodes of HBO's series "Rome". I wonder where they got that idea from.


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## Delvo

I've found the quote to which various sources in and out of this thread have been referring. I was hoping to find more information around the short bit that's usually described, to fill in more details. And there was a bit more, not much, but enough...



> The most civilised of all these nations are they who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime district, nor do they differ much from the Gallic customs. Most of the inland inhabitants do not sow grain, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad with skins. All the Britons, indeed, dye themselves with wood, which occasions a bluish colour, and thereby have a more terrible appearance in fight.


I underlined the words which reveal why I couldn't find this by searching for "woad", "blue", or "color".  I have no doubt that the "wood" bit comes from a misreading of English "woad" in someone's translation dictionary or someone else's attempt to correct what (s)he thought was a misspelling in English, because the Latin word "vitrum" (woad, glass, glaze, shininess) could never have been mistaken for "lignum" (wood). I finally found it by searching for "terrible", which would have been followed by "horrible" and "horrific" if that hadn't worked, based on the quote in this thread from a military tattoo website.

Anyway, the interesting discovery in here that's new to me is the first two sentences before the thing about dye and woad. I saw, elsewhere in the book when discussing Gaul, that GJC describes the Keltic people as more civilized and advanced than the Germanic people, so his description here of the people on the coasts of the British island is consistent with that. In the next sentence, his description of the diet and dress of those who lived farther inland matches a description he gives elsewhere of the Germanic people of Gaul. I had had no idea that Germanic people had been on the island so early, but that's who he's describing here.

So, in the next sentence, when he says that the "all the Britons dye themselves with <woad>", he's using that name to refer to everybody on the island, not using it as a name for a certain Keltic tribe as I had thought upon seeing that sentence quoted before. Context reveals that he's talking about members of both kinds of tribe, both cultures. So this practice, even if it originated with just one set or the other, was adopted as tradition by both, at least on the island. (Because he says this about the islanders but does not include it when describing the customs of the natives of Gaul, it would appear to be something he encountered on the island but didn't encounter in Gaul.)


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## Delvo

Well, with the help I got in this thread, the final decision's been made, just not carried out yet because of money. (It will happen sometime this spring or summer.)

Of course, the color is fairly simple: Caesar said blue, and I shall obey.

There's a bit more to the shape. Without knowing whether any of the specific shapes represent anything, I had practically no way to pick one over the rest. But I noticed that certain patterns repeated a few times, and decided to make something up that would represent the group overall as much as possible. The most common patterns are radially symmetrical groups of circles or a circle combined with something else more linear (#1, #4, #7, #8, and arguably #10 although that's a helmet decoration) and radial starburst/starfish-like shapes, sometimes with the arms curved (the photograph of the golden coin and #3, #5, and #6). Those patterns are fairly easy to combine:






But I was never quite happy with any version I got of that; kept seeming like the arms were too long, too short, too thin, too thick, too curved, or too straight, or the circles were too big, too small, too thin, or too thick... and worse yet, it kept reminding me of either a swastika, a Klingon symbol, or one of those pointy "tribal" trendy tattoos that I'm deliberately avoiding and sorto mocking. (That was a big part of what made me think of doing this at all in the first place!) I solved that by rotating part of it until the parts smooshed into each other:






Of course, mine won't go on my face. It will have to be someplace that I can easily switch between hiding and showing, and the lower leg is best for that. Also, although Caesar said "blue", that doesn't specify how dark or bright. I'm not sure what the best shade would be like because light blues might blend in too much with my skin and dark blues might get too much like black, so I might make it mostly bright but with a dark outline to separate it from the surrounding skin. So the finished product will be something roughly like this:


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