Archaeologists discovered mummified bodies in Sudan and discovered that children as young as 18 months old had their faces tattooed 1,400 years ago in the Nile Valley region. Furthermore, this practice coincided with the introduction of Christianity to the area known as Nubia.
“If the tattoo was a symbol of the person’s Christian beliefs, it may have been important for parents to create a permanent way to mark their children as Christian,” says study lead author Anne Austin, an archaeologist at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. Lewis told LiveScience.
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Tattoos are a long-standing custom of mankind. Some of the earliest archaeological evidence of tattoos is found in Ötzi the Iceman, whose well-preserved 5,300-year-old remains found in the Alps had 61 tattoos. Other early tattoos have been discovered on a 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, a 2,300-year-old Siberian mummy, and a 1,200-year-old Peruvian mummy. However, all of these examples were adult tattoos. It is much rarer for children to be discovered with tattoos.
In a new study, researchers have identified widespread examples of tattooing at the Christian-era site of Kulbnarti in northern Sudan. The two cemeteries at this site were in use from 650 to 1000 AD. Using a microscope equipped with infrared illumination that can penetrate the skin to reveal tattoos that are nearly invisible to the naked eye, researchers identified 17 people with clear tattoos and six with possible faded tattoos.
While studying exactly where on the bodies the people buried at Kulbunarti had their tattoos, researchers noticed an unusual pattern. Two had tattoos on their backs, and the rest had patterns on their foreheads, temples, cheeks, and eyebrows. Facial tattoos are already relatively rare in the archaeological record, but researchers have discovered an even rarer practice: tattooing on children.
Most of the tattooed Kulbunarti people were children under the age of 11, and the youngest person with a clear tattoo was 18 months old, the researchers wrote in their study. The three-year-old girl was also found to have one tattoo directly on top of another, suggesting that young children were being repeatedly tattooed.
The tattoo consisted of a collection of dots and dashed lines. Austin said the most common design was a four-dot tattoo on the forehead in a diamond-shaped pattern, which may represent a Christian cross. “If tattoos were used as a sign of Christianity in Krubunarti, it is entirely plausible that they were part of a form of baptism,” she says.
But researchers are also investigating other theories about the extensive tattooing of children found in cemeteries.
“If parents tattooed their children for protection or medical reasons, perhaps the high rates of tattooing among young children may indicate that the Kurbunarti population faces a disproportionate number of health problems,” Austin said.
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Forehead tattoos may represent an attempt by parents to protect their children from the headaches and high fevers commonly experienced during malaria outbreaks, which have a long history in the Nile Valley, the study said.
The researchers also found that the shape of the tattoo marks suggests that Nubians likely used knives rather than needles to get their tattoos.
Austin says people shouldn’t be too quick to judge people’s tattoos in the past, even if they were merely decorative.
“The form of tattooing in Kulbunarti may have been done quite early, but it doesn’t seem to be any more extreme than piercing the ears of infants or circumcising newborns,” she says.
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