Tattoo History
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Dive into the rich and fascinating world of tattoo history with our comprehensive free 97-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.
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Q 01Which ancient human remains, discovered in 1991, are known for bearing the oldest preserved tattoos?
Ötzi the Iceman
Ötzi the Iceman: the hikers who found him took the body for a recent mountaineering casualty, but he died some 5,300 years ago, and his 61 tattoos are the oldest preserved on human skin.
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'; because the style became tied to the yakuza, many Japanese public baths, gyms and hot springs still turn away customers with tattoos.
Q 04Who patented the first electric tattoo machine in 1891?
Samuel O'Reilly
Samuel O'Reilly: the tattooer reworked an Edison invention so that its motor drove inked needles, and added a tube and an ink reservoir to feed them.
Q 05In pharaonic Egypt, tattooing appears to have been practised almost exclusively on which group?
Women
Women: nearly all the tattooed mummies found there are female, among them the priestess Amunet; a Cairo doctor argued in 1898 that the dotted patterns over the abdomen were a medical treatment, not decoration.
Q 06Which European explorer's expedition introduced the word "tattoo" into English after visiting Tahiti?
Captain James Cook
Captain James Cook: his 1769 journal from Tahiti noted that 'both sexes paint their Bodys, Tattow, as it is called in their Language', and the published accounts of the voyage carried the word into English.
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 08Which reality series, launched on TLC in 2005, followed tattoo artists Ami James and Chris Núñez at their shop?
Miami Ink
Miami Ink: filmed at the pair's shop in Miami Beach, it ran until 2008 and spun off LA Ink, London Ink and NY Ink.
Q 09Which people of northern Britain did the Romans call by a name usually explained as 'painted ones'?
Picts
Picts: Picti first appears in a Roman speech of 297 AD and is usually read as 'painted ones', yet carved stones show Pictish nobles without obvious tattoos, so whether they marked their skin is still debated.
Q 10Caesar said Britons dyed themselves with 'vitrum', a Latin word that more usually means what?
Glass
Glass: vitrum is the ordinary Latin word for glass, and 'woad' is only its rarer second sense, so scholars still argue over what Caesar's Britons really put on their skin.
Q 11In traditional Austronesian tattooing tools, what were the skin-piercing points made from?
Bone, thorns or shell
Bone, thorns or shell: the point was lashed at right angles to a handle and tapped in with a mallet, a toolkit already in use around Taiwan before 1500 BCE that travelled with Austronesian voyagers across the Pacific.
Q 12Under what nickname was Jeoly, a tattooed man William Dampier brought to London, exhibited in the 1690s?
The Painted Prince
The Painted Prince: short of money, Dampier sold his share in Jeoly on reaching London; promoters then showed him at an inn in Fleet Street until he died of smallpox in Oxford.
Q 13From 1796, American sailors' tattoos were noted on protection certificates meant to save them from what?
Q 21Which Pacific island culture is known for geometric tattooing covering the whole body?
Marquesan
Marquesan tattooing began in a boy's teens and was added to through life, so elders could be covered all over; each person's designs were unique, recording island, family and achievements.
Q 22Which US state was the last to legalize tattooing, in 2006?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma: its 1963 ban had not stopped tattooists, who worked illegally with no health rules, so the state Health Department, alarmed by rising hepatitis infections, backed licensing and inspecting parlours instead.
Q 23The 1769 voyage that first recorded 'tattow' sailed to Tahiti to observe what?
Transit of Venus
Royal Navy press gangs
Royal Navy press gangs: Congress authorised the certificates to prove a seaman was American, and clerks listed tattoos, scars and birthmarks to identify him, which is why so much early sailor ink is on record.
Q 14Which circus performer is often called the first known female tattoo artist in the United States?
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 showman she married.
Q 15Which US city outlawed tattooing from 1961 until 1997?
New York
New York: the Health Department blamed tattoo parlours for a hepatitis outbreak, so the city's tattooists went underground, working quietly from private apartments until the ban was lifted.
Q 16The earliest known figurative tattoos, about 5,000 years old, were found on mummies from which civilization?
Egypt
Egypt: the dark smudges on Gebelein Man's arm had been on show in the British Museum for a century before infrared imaging in 2018 revealed a wild bull and a Barbary sheep.
Q 17In 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 18Which 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; fifteen years later a tattooer realised its reciprocating needle could drive ink into skin and patented a tube-and-needle version.
Q 19The 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 20What do Q-switched tattoo-removal lasers do to the ink?
Shatter it
Shatter it: the laser pulse breaks the ink into particles small enough for the body's immune system to clear away, so a tattoo fades over several sessions spaced weeks apart.
Transit of Venus: the Royal Society asked for the voyage so that the crossing could be timed from the Pacific, which would help astronomers work out the Earth's distance from the Sun.
Q 24Which 4th-century Roman emperor banned tattooing the faces of condemned convicts?
Constantine I
Constantine I: the first Christian emperor ruled that convicts sent to the mines or the arena be marked on the hands or calves instead, since the face was made in the likeness of heavenly beauty.
Q 25What is the traditional male tattoo of the Samoan Islands, applied with hand-tapped serrated combs, called?
Pe'a
Pe'a: the tattoo runs from waist to knees and is tapped in with a toothed comb and mallet; a man who cannot bear the pain and stops is left with an unfinished pe'a, a lifelong mark of shame.
Q 26Amunet, a tattooed mummy found at Deir el-Bahari, was a priestess of which goddess?
Hathor
Hathor: early excavators dismissed the tattooed mummies of Deir el-Bahari as lowly dancers, though they lay in a royal burial ground and Amunet's coffin gives her title as priestess.
Q 27Which 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 28Which ancient people, known for elaborate tattoos, were excavated from the Pazyryk burials in Siberia?
Scythians
Scythians: water seeped into the Pazyryk tombs and froze, so the skin of a chieftain buried there survived for more than 2,000 years with its animal tattoos still clear.
Q 29Which future tsar had a dragon tattooed on his arm while visiting Japan in 1891?
Nicholas II
Nicholas II: his diary records seven hours under the needle aboard his ship at Nagasaki; about two weeks later a Japanese policeman slashed his head with a sabre at Otsu, leaving a permanent scar.
Q 30Which singer wore a tattooed wrist bracelet inked by San Francisco artist Lyle Tuttle?
Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin: Tuttle gave her a wristlet and a small heart on her breast, and in October 1970 he made the cover of Rolling Stone; he credited women's liberation with putting tattooing back on the map.