Everybody wants it sometime, or do they?

In Western cultures, for different reasons, an increasing number of youth and young adults have been getting tattooed. Visitors to Turkey are often surprised to see all the tattoo studios and the young Turks with tattoos. Tattooing began centuries before the Western "punk" hairstyle/body-piercing fashion that has also spread to Turkey.

-- During early Egyptian civilization tattooing was popular and spread to other civilizations.

-- Japanese clay figurines bear evidence of the tattooing craft and Japanese men began adorning their bodies with elaborate tattoos in the late third century.

-- Ancient Polynesians etched tattoos on their bodies to mark their spiritual beliefs.

-- Samoans actually ritualized the art.

-- Traces of tattooing date back as far back as 7000 B.C. in Çatalhöyük. You may have gone to a "henna night" (kına gecesi) where henna is used for ornamentation purposes (mainly on the hands and feet) before the wedding. That can be considered a tattoo night of sorts.

Henna leaves are probably the earliest known temporary tattoo that was used extensively in the ancient cultures of the Middle East and Asia. The leaves are dried in the sun, ground to a fine powder and later mixed with water to produce a semi-permanent dye. Henna is believed to be healthy. It's not a new fashion: Evidence exists that henna was used for decorating the hands in ancient times.

Back to our original question: Why have so many cultures marked the human body?

To learn more about techniques and the history, visit this Web site:http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/tattoo.html?c=y&page=5

To this day tattoos are increasingly popular and are created by inserting coloring beneath the surface of the skin. People have been getting tattoos for centuries for numerous reasons ranging from medicinal, status symbols, expression of speech and for magical or appropriate societal, political or religious significance. Mind you, criminals were also tattooed!

Tattooing seems to be more than a form of self-expression or fashion statement.

In many cases, it seems to have sprung up independently as a permanent way to place protective or therapeutic symbols upon the body, then as a means of marking people out into appropriate social, political or religious groups (a type of identification card), or simply as a form of self-expression or fashion statement. Here are just a few examples.

The Maori people of New Zealand believe the head to be the most important part of the body. Maori people embellished the face with elaborate tattoos unique to each individual, acting as a form of identification.

The Greeks and Romans used tattoos to show their allegiance. Tattoos seem to have been largely used as a means to mark someone as "belonging" either to a religious sect or to an owner in the case of slaves or even as a punitive measure to mark them as criminals. The fashion was also adopted by Roman soldiers and spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity, when tattoos were felt to "disfigure that made in God's image" and so were banned by the Emperor Constantine (A.D. 306-373).

Parents everywhere have to deal with teen whims (or are they a whim?). Tim Russert, moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press" television program, died at the age of 58 on June 13. In a Father's Day rerun interview on Larry King, Mr. Russert shared about how he, as a father, had always feared his son would come home with a tattoo. One night his son did just that! When Tim asked to see the tattoo he was moved to tears because his son had had the initials of his grandfather and father tastefully tattooed on his upper arm in a small box. In this case, the tattoo reflected those he loved.

Some people get tattoos because they want to stand apart from the crowd and be noticed. The only tattoo I ever had was with the kind that you could do on yourself by just wetting the bubblegum wrapper and pressing it on your skin. It was washed off with the next bath!

Share your opinion or personal story about tattoos with me.