An Unreliable History of Tattoos

The tattoo is an art form, a practice . . . for some, a ritual. Its history is long and colorful, dating back to the Neolithic, when our ancestors marked their bodies with symbolic lines derived from a carbon paste. Today, those same markings can be made on entering the neon parlors that line our cities.Maybe it's time to stop taking them so seriously.

Paul Thomas's work has also appeared in the Sunday Times, the Times, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, Private Eye, and Shares magazine. He has illustrated three books by Hunter Davies for Random House.