Painted People: Humanity in 21 Tattoos

In 1881, a writer in the Saturday Review called tattooing `an art without a history'. `No-one', it went on, `has made it the business of his life to study the development of tattooing.'

Until now.

Painted People is a beguiling and intimate look at an untold history of humanity.

The earliest tattoos yet identified belonged to Ötzi, the `iceman', whose mummy allows us a brief glimpse into the prehistory of the practice. We know that over the more than five thousand years since he was tattooed, ...