50 free Body Piercing trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This body piercing trivia quiz covers a practice at least 5,300 years old. It starts with the deep history: the pierced ears of the Iceman, the earrings in the royal graves of Ur, the nose ring Rebecca receives in Genesis, the Mayan nobles who bled their tongues with thorns, the lip plates of the Mursi and the sailors who believed an earring would pay for their burial. It then explains why so much of the printed 'history' of piercing is wrong, thanks to one Hollywood businessman's pamphlet of invented legends. The second half is the modern industry: the West Hollywood shop that started it in the 1970s, the punk safety pin, Fakir Musafar and the modern primitives, the 1993 music video that made the navel ring a craze, the Super Bowl halftime show that boosted business, the world records for the most piercings, and the everyday facts of the trade: which metals are safest, why professionals shun piercing guns, what an industrial is, how long a navel takes to heal and what a fistula is. Some piercings are adult subject matter; the questions here stay on the history, culture and craft. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on body piercing and its individual forms, tools and people, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How wide was the ear piercing found on Ötzi the Iceman?
7-11 mm
That is a stretched lobe by modern standards, more than five millennia ago.
Q 02The oldest known ear jewellery came from the Royal Cemetery of which ancient city?
Ur
They date to about 2550 BCE in the Early Dynastic Period III of Sumer.
Q 03In Exodus, Aaron makes the golden calf by melting down what?
Ear ornaments
Elsewhere in the Bible, Jacob buries his household's earrings and Deuteronomy prescribes ear piercing for a slave who chooses to stay.
Q 04Nose piercing is documented as far back as which date?
1500 BCE
The Vedas of that era refer to a goddess's nose piercings.
Q 05Which Hindu goddess's nose piercings are mentioned in the Vedas?
Lakshmi
Modern Indian nose-piercing practice is thought to have arrived with the Mughals in the 16th century.
Q 06Which nostril do Indian Hindu women customarily pierce, and why?
The left, for its Ayurvedic link to the reproductive organs
The piercing is sometimes done the night before a woman marries.
Q 07In Genesis 24, whose servant gives Rebecca a nose ring?
Abraham's
Bedouin, Berber and Beja peoples and Australian Aboriginals have all practised nose piercing.
Q 08Which Native American tribe's name derives from nose piercing, though few of them practised it?
Nez Perce
Many Native American and Alaskan peoples practised septum piercing.
Q 09Which Panamanian people are known for wearing gold septum rings?
The Guna
The Aztecs, Maya and Incas wore them for adornment.
Q 10What is a labret?
A pierced lip adornment
The Tlingit, the Aztecs and the Maya all wore them; among the Haida they were the oldest high-status symbol for women.
Q 11Women of which Nile Valley people wear lip rings that can reach 15 centimetres across?
Mursi
Lip stretching with plates or plugs was also found across Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Pacific Northwest.
Q 12The Mayan nobility pierced their tongues with thorns and did what with the blood?
Burned it on bark for the gods
Wall paintings record the ritual, which the Aztecs and Olmec also practised.
Q 13Why did medieval European sailors pierce one ear, according to superstition?
To improve long-distance vision
Q 21What was PFIQ?
The first publication devoted to piercing
Jim Ward published Piercing Fans International Quarterly as word of the practice spread.
Q 22Which 1970s youth movement embraced piercing with safety pins?
Punk
At the same time Fakir Musafar was promoting piercing as part of Modern Primitivism.
Q 23What was the real name of Fakir Musafar, a founder of the modern primitive movement?
Roland Loomis
He first performed a flesh-hook suspension in 1966 or 1967 after watching anthropological films.
They also believed the earring could pay for a Christian burial if their body washed ashore.
Q 14Which Elizabethan notables are named as wearing an ear ring, typically in one ear only?
Shakespeare, Raleigh and Charles I
The fashion reached England from Spain via the court of Henry III of France.
Q 15Among the Tlingit, why did jewellery in the ears signal nobility and wealth?
Each placement had to be bought at a potlatch
The Pacific Northwest people also wore labrets.
Q 16What kind of ear jewellery became fashionable after World War I as piercing fell from favour?
The clip-on
Clip-ons dominated the 1920s; pierced lobes came back into fashion from the 1960s.
Q 17Who was 'Doug Malloy', whose pamphlet spread invented piercing legends?
A Hollywood businessman using a pseudonym
Richard Simonton also rescued the steamboat Delta Queen and founded the American Theatre Organ Society.
Q 18Which myth did Malloy's pamphlet spread about Roman centurions?
They hung their capes from nipple rings
The same pamphlet claimed Prince Albert invented the piercing named after him; both stories were repeated as fact.
Q 19Which piercing's history did Malloy falsely tie to ancient Egyptian aristocrats?
Navel
Other sources say there are no records at all of navel piercing before the 20th century.
Q 20The Gauntlet, the first US body piercing business, opened as a storefront where in 1978?
West Hollywood
Jim Ward had run it from home since 1975 with money from Doug Malloy.
Q 24Which 1993 Aerosmith video, showing a navel piercing, set off a craze among young women?
Cryin'
It won MTV's Video of the Year; The Piercing Bible says the resulting demand essentially created the piercing industry.
Q 25Which actress had her navel pierced on camera in that Aerosmith video?
Alicia Silverstone
Body piercer Paul King did the honours.
Q 26Which 2004 event gave the piercing trade a widely reported boost in business?
Janet Jackson's Super Bowl 'wardrobe malfunction'
The halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII exposed her pierced nipple.
Q 27Which two piercings were considered highly fashionable in 2015?
Septum and nipple
Navel and eyebrow piercings had been the 1990s favourites.
Q 28In a 2005 English survey, which was the second most common non-lobe piercing site, at 19 percent?
Nose
The navel came top at 33 percent and the ear cartilage third at 13.
Q 29What share of people in a 2005 English survey had a piercing somewhere other than the earlobe?
10%
The figure rose to 46 percent among women aged 16 to 24.
Q 30Who holds the Guinness record as the Most Pierced Woman?
Elaine Davidson
The Brazilian first set the record in 2000 with 462 piercings; by 2009 she was reported to have 6,005.