The oldest known tattoo is that found on Oetzi, a Bronze Age warrior who lived some fifty-three centuries ago. Oetzi's remains were founding 1991 preserved in the ice of the of an Alpone glacier on the border of Austria and Italy. Oetzi actually had fifty-seven separate tattoos, and although no one really knows their significance, it is possible that his intersecting and parallel lines are the earliest yet discovered example of tribal art tattoos. If so, Oetzi would be surprised to learn that he is quite the 21st century trend-setter.In a world gone tattoo-mad, tribal art tattoos seem to have cause more than their fair share of the frenzy. They are the most requested, and most easily recognized, of all tattoos. With their startling black lines and sharply defined abstract shapes which somehow evoke animal, birds, and reptiles, tribal art tattoos remind us of a long-lost connection to an unspoiled world.
The term tribal art tattoos encompasses the tattoo styles developed by the by the African and Pacific Island tribal cultures, and of those the Maori people of New Zealand created the most distinctive tattoos. Their custom of identifying separate families within their tribes by cutting and coloring that family's history into the faces of its descendants is known as Moko, and has been the inspiration for many a modern facial tribal art tattoo.
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