Tribal Tattoo Designs: Tracing Back the Origins

With all the cultures that the world once nursed, nurses and will eventually nurse. With all the traditions it sees, has seen and will never see again. With all the civilizations that threaded its earth. All those that have left tokens of remembrance of their existence and those that did not. It is almost impossible that she was not able to capture enough of them in art.

Art seems to be the most effective medium to preserve the passing of a specific age. Without art, we may not have known that primitive men knew how to depict their ancient lives in drawings. Without art, we may have descended to simple existence that knew nothing of the beauty that our pasts held. It is art that immortalized the history of our predecessors. In the absence of art, we may have been long deprived of self-expression.

Self-expression is the main focus of tattoos. However, during its primitive years, the practice of illustrating designs into human body meant more than to express what the self dictates. Somehow, tattoos (more specifically tribal tattoos) meant a destiny, a social status, a belonging to a group. It is the life or death or a sense of accomplishment for an individual. They are artistic designs and symbolism that help define a person's passion, identity and beliefs.

All these are true, depending on the tribes from which the art form originated. Tribal tattoos that we know of today are said to have gained their patterns from ancient origins. Let us inspect some of these tribes.

The Celtic tribe
While the people of this tribe have now vanished (but not completely) from history, it is good to note that their culture showered down onto us as they left. Their music and artistic expressions have gone down the years and even now, we still feel them with the artworks that they managed to preserve.

Tribal tattoos patterned from Celtic arts composed mainly of intertwining laces, knots, spirals, abstract depictions of faunas and mythical figures.  Because of the universality of Celtic themes, many people find themselves completely expressed with patterns that were presumed to be of Celtic descent.

The Maori tribes
These are the people of ancient New Zealand. They are superb wood carvers and are noted to have worn facial and leg tattoos. Their tribal patterns were mostly characterized with their artfulness in woodcarving that typically fashioned spirals. Their moko, as facial tattoos were called, are very personalized that these served primarily for identity. It was said that once a member of the Maori tribe died, the light will pass through his physical body yet the facial tattoo will show his true identity.

The Marquesan tribes
The Polynesians are mainly responsible for the development of the tattoo arts. Tribal tattoos used by these tribes normally to depict the history of the person wearing it, his identity and his social status. In most cases, the bodies of Marquesan tribe members are covered with tattoos.

The Haida tribes
Even the American Indians wore tattoos. They are warriors by nature and they love to have some representations of their accomplishments. They normally convey masculinity in their tribal tattoos through using images of animals. They believe that one will partly take some of the animal's strength once its image is imbedded into the person's skin.