Tattoo History
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Dive into the rich and fascinating world of tattoo history with our comprehensive free 49-question trivia quiz with answers. From ancient civilizations to modern body art, test your knowledge about the evolution of tattoos, legendary artists, and iconic designs that have shaped this timeless form of expression. Whether you're a tattoo enthusiast, artist, or simply curious about this cultural phenomenon, this quiz will challenge and educate you.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which ancient human remains, discovered in 1991, are known for bearing the oldest preserved tattoos?
Ötzi the Iceman
Ötzi the Iceman, a natural mummy from around 3370 to 3100 BCE, was found to have 61 tattoos, making him the oldest known tattooed human remains. These tattoos are believed to have had a therapeutic function.
Q 02The English word 'tattoo', from 'tatau', is believed to have come from which language family?
Polynesian
Polynesian tatau, in Samoan, Tahitian and Tongan, gave English its word; before the loanword arrived, the practice had been described in the West as painting, scarring or staining.
Q 03What is the traditional name for the distinctive style of Japanese tattooing?
Irezumi
Irezumi: the word literally means 'inserting ink'; its full-body designs of koi, dragons and folk heroes flourished in the Edo period, and traditional practitioners, called horishi, take names built around hori, 'to engrave'.
Q 04Who patented the first electric tattoo machine in 1891?
Samuel O'Reilly
Samuel O'Reilly discovered that Edison's rotary duplicating device could be modified to push ink into skin, and patented a tube-and-needle ink reservoir.
Q 05In pharaonic Egypt, tattooing appears to have been practised almost exclusively on which group?
Women
Women: nearly all tattooed mummies from pharaonic Egypt are female, including the priestess Amunet from Deir el-Bahari (c. 2000 BCE); the predynastic Gebelein Man is the one early male exception.
Q 06Which European explorer's expedition introduced the word "tattoo" into English after visiting Tahiti?
Captain James Cook
Captain James Cook: his Endeavour journal from Tahiti recorded that 'both sexes paint their Bodys, Tattow, as it is called in their Language', and his crew carried the word and the practice back to Britain.
Q 07In Māori culture, what are the traditional facial tattoos called?
Moko
Moko: tā moko, the Māori facial tattoo, was historically carved with uhi chisels rather than punctured, leaving grooved skin; its spiral patterns recorded the wearer's genealogy and rank.
Q 08In ancient Greece and Rome, what was the primary purpose of tattoos for many individuals?
Marking slaves and criminals
Marking slaves and criminals: Greeks and Romans called such marks stigmata; they could spell out the crime, the master's name or the sentence, and a freed slave who bore them was barred from Roman citizenship.
Q 09Which northern British people's Latin name first appears in a panegyric of 297 AD?
Picts
Picts: Picti first appears in a panegyric of 297 AD and is usually explained as 'painted ones', from Latin pingere; whether the Picts were actually tattooed, and with what pigment, remains debated.
Q 10Caesar said Britons dyed themselves with 'vitrum', a Latin word that more usually means what?
Glass
Glass: vitrum is the everyday Latin word for glass; 'woad' is a secondary sense taken from Caesar's line that all Britons 'vitro inficiunt', stain themselves with vitrum, and the pigment they actually used remains uncertain.
Q 11In traditional Austronesian tattooing tools, what were the skin-piercing points made from?
Bone, thorns or shell
Bone, thorns or shell: Austronesian tattooing used a hafted point of bone, thorn or shell tapped in with a wooden mallet; comb-type tattoo chisels found in Taiwan date to before 1500 BCE and resemble those used across Polynesia.
Q 12Under what nickname did William Dampier exhibit the tattooed Jeoly in 1690s London?
The Painted Prince
The Painted Prince: Dampier sold his share in Jeoly, a tattooed man from the island of Miangas, and he was shown as 'the Painted Prince' at a Fleet Street inn in 1691; he died of smallpox in Oxford in 1692.
Q 13By the early 19th century, what were the most common images tattooed on American seafarers?
Q 21In which decade did Q-switched lasers become the standard for tattoo removal?
1990s
1990s: continuous-wave and short-pulsed lasers had been tried on tattoos since the late 1960s, but Q-switched ruby, alexandrite and Nd:YAG devices became commercially available in the early 1990s and quickly became the standard.
Q 22Which Pacific island culture is known for geometric tattooing covering the whole body?
Marquesan
Marquesan work is recognisable by trademark motifs such as geckos, centipedes, tiki figures and the Marquesan cross.
Q 23Which US state was the last to legalize tattooing, in 2006?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma: after a ban dating to the 1960s, Oklahoma became the last US state to legalize tattooing when Governor Brad Henry signed the law in May 2006; South Carolina had legalized it in 2004.
Anchors and ships
Anchors and ships: protection certificates issued to American sailors after the Revolution recorded their tattoos as identification against Royal Navy impressment, and alongside initials and dates the commonest pictures were anchors and ships.
Q 14Which circus performer is recognized as the first known professional female tattoo artist in the US?
Maud Wagner
Maud Wagner: born Maud Stevens in Kansas in 1877, she worked as a circus aerialist and contortionist and learned tattooing from the heavily tattooed circus man she married, becoming America's first known professional female tattoo artist.
Q 15In which year did New York City ban tattooing after a hepatitis scare?
1961
1961: New York City's health department outlawed tattooing in 1961, blaming a hepatitis outbreak; the ban stood until the city council legalized the trade again in 1997.
Q 16A 1652 Jesuit account of Petun and Neutral tattooing says the perforated skin was rubbed with what?
Powdered charcoal
Powdered charcoal: the 1652 Jesuit Relation describes Petun and Neutral people pricking designs such as an animal figure into the skin and rubbing powdered charcoal into the perforations to make them indelible.
Q 17The earliest known figurative tattoos, from 3351-3017 BCE, were found on mummies from which civilization?
Egypt
Egypt: the two Gebelein mummies in the British Museum, a man with a wild bull and a Barbary sheep and a woman with S-shaped motifs, were re-examined in 2018 and dated to 3351-3017 BCE.
Q 18In the Victorian era, tattooing gained a surprising popularity among which social class in Europe?
Aristocracy and royalty
Aristocracy and royalty: despite the link with sailors and criminals, tattooing became a fad among Europe's upper classes in the late 19th century, with society tattooists such as Sutherland Macdonald working from London's Jermyn Street.
Q 19Which Edison invention of 1876 became the basis of the first powered tattoo machine?
The electric pen
The electric pen: Edison patented the battery-driven stencil-making pen in 1876; in 1891 New York tattooer Samuel O'Reilly realised its reciprocating needle could drive ink into skin and patented a tube-and-needle version.
Q 20The ancient Greek verb for tattooing, stizein, meant what?
To prick or sting
To prick or sting: Greek stizein meant to prick or puncture, and its noun stigma named the resulting mark; because such marks branded slaves and criminals, 'stigma' came to mean a lasting mark of disgrace.
Q 24In what year did the Endeavour reach Tahiti, where its log first recorded the word 'tattow'?
1769
1769: Endeavour anchored in Tahiti's Matavai Bay on 13 April 1769 to observe the transit of Venus in June; Cook's journal that July described the islanders' 'tattow', done 'by inlaying the Colour of Black under their skins'.
Q 25Which Roman emperor banned tattooing the faces of condemned convicts in 316 AD?
Constantine I
Constantine I: in 316 AD the first Christian emperor banned tattooing the faces of convicts sent to the mines or the arena, declaring the face made in the image of God; marks were to go on hands or calves instead.
Q 26What is the traditional male tattoo of the Samoan Islands, applied with hand-tapped serrated combs, called?
Pe'a
The pe'a runs from waist to knees in heavy symmetrical black lines, arrows and dots, struck in with serrated bone combs and a mallet.
Q 27Which type of tattoo device, patented in 1891 by Thomas Riley, was built around a modified doorbell?
Single coil
Single coil: Riley's London patent of December 1891, a doorbell electromagnet housed in a brass box, was the first single-coil electromagnetic tattoo machine, granted just twenty days after O'Reilly's rotary design.
Q 28Amunet, one of the best-known tattooed mummies found at Deir el-Bahari, was a priestess of which goddess?
Hathor
Hathor: Amunet, a priestess of the goddess Hathor in Dynasty XI (c. 2000 BCE), bore tattoos on her arms, thighs and abdomen; two tattooed Hathoric dancers were found at the same Deir el-Bahari site.
Q 29Which early American tattoo artist met his circus-aerialist wife at the 1904 World's Fair?
Gus Wagner
Gus Wagner: a sailor who learned hand-poked tattooing in the Pacific, Wagner billed himself 'the most artistically marked up man in America' and met aerialist Maud Stevens at the 1904 St. Louis fair; she later became a tattooist.
Q 30Which ancient people, known for elaborate tattoos, were excavated from the Pazyryk burials in Siberia?
Scythians
Scythians: the Pazyryk kurgans in the Altai (5th-3rd century BCE) belong to the Scythian world; a frozen chieftain bears fish, griffins and a line of dots along the spine, and the tattooed 'Princess of Ukok' comes from the same region.