Scientists use lasers to reveal intricate tattoos on Peruvian mummies

Nowadays more than 30 percent of Americans sport tattoos, but there’s nothing new about our fascination with body art. As tattoos take over contemporary culture, scientists look to the past and discover the secrets of ancient ink.

By examining mummified remains using a technique called laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF), researchers reveal body art of the Chancay culturea group that lived on the Peruvian coast between about 900 and 1500 CE, according to a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“LSF technology lets us see tattoos in their full glory,” says study co-author Thomas G Kayea paleontologist at the Foundation for Scientific Advancement, in a statement. “The Chancay culture, known for its mass-produced textiles, also invested significant effort in personal body art. This could point to tattoos as a second important artistic focus, perhaps having deep cultural or spiritual significance.”

Tattoos fade over time, making them difficult for scientists to study centuries later. But with the help of LSF, experts can discover the original lines of the body art.

This technique involves shining a laser on the mummy so that the skin glows, creating a sharp contrast to the ink visible when taking long-exposure photographs. The team studied tattoos with different patterns on more than 100 mummies.

“To some extent, ancient Chancay tattoos show many parallels to the variation in design and meaning that we can observe in tattoos today,” study co-author Michael Pittmansays a paleobiologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong New scientist‘S James Woodford.

Some tattoos were geometric, with shapes such as triangles and diamonds. Others feature vine-like patterns and images of animals.

The researchers were particularly intrigued by the thinness of some of the lines that made up the intricate designs, finding the level of accuracy “higher than associated pottery, textiles and petroglyphs,” according to the study.

“We were most surprised by how detailed the Chancay tattoos could be,” says Pittman Popular scienceby Laura Baisas. “The 0.1 [to] 0.2 millimeter lines we discovered are finer than any line a standard #12 modern tattoo needle can produce, so the level of skill and effort required of the Chancay artist really blew us away .”

However, not all experts agree that LSF is a particularly new or effective method for studying tattoos.

Aaron Deter Wolfa prehistoric archaeologist with the Tennessee Division of Archeology who was not involved in the study, says the study did not demonstrate why LSF is superior to other, more common techniques – such as multispectral imaging – for examining ancient tattoos.

“This is a nice extra tool in our package, but it is not groundbreaking,” he says New York TimesBecky Ferreira.

Kasia Szremskian archaeologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who was not involved in the research, says Living Science‘s Kristina Killgrove argues that historians don’t know much about the Chancay culture, and that learning more about their tattooing practices will provide new insights into their daily lives.

“In many societies, tattoos are used to mark people with special status,” she says. “By better understanding what Chancay tattoos look like, we can look for patterns that can help us identify different types, classes or statuses of people.”

The study authors say their work is “just the tip of the iceberg,” and they hope LSF will help scientists explore tattoos from different cultures throughout history.