The maori tattoo designs have a very rich and powerful culture carried with them all the way to the present times. The Maoris were the natives of New Zealand and were known for their intricate facial designs that were known as “moko” or facial tattoos. What makes this design different from the ones we know of today is that the maori tattoo designs are all over the face and not just merely on the shoulder and arms. The people long before used their tattoos as their symbols, their signatures, and their identities everyday up to the coming of the Europeans.

The natives described the birth of the Maori moko through a myth or legend. They preserved the history of their facial tattooing rituals until such time that their land was discovered by the Europeans. Modernization began to unfold and the tradition of the moko began to deteriorate. But we see how strong their culture is with regards to their facial tattoos when the men used the moko of their chief as a way of signing an agreement with the foreigners. Hence, it was known as an artistic form of writing that continued up to the 1800s.
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It used to be that tattoos really symbolized something and were not used as merely for decorative purposes only. Tribal people used tattoos to mark manhood, count wars, the number of men that they have killed and many other symbols such as those. Tattoos were also very religious in the old days, where people would have tattoos to please their gods.

It was said that the Crusaders had a small tattoo of a cross on their hand so that if they die in battle, whoever finds his body would know that he was a Christian and would bury his body properly. Other religious sects also had similar practices.
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You remember when you were in boring college classes, and you keep yourself busy by sketching otherworldly images on the pages of your notebooks that contain nothing but sketches. You promised yourself that one day those sketches will come into life, in its full colors, and breathing with soul.

When sketches are drawn on the human body, it becomes more than your usual black-and-white sketches but tattoo sketches that are brought to life by the person wearing it. Suddenly, tattoo sketches acquire life or soul, probably because the blood veins that flow within that body seem to give life, too, to those tattoos.

Thanks to flickr

Prior to finally having your tattoo done, choosing from the numerous sketches is truly confusing. There will always be some good sketches from one choice to another. So how do you know that the tattoo sketch you choose is the perfect one for your personality? It is easy so long as you have guides to remind you of what you want and who you are as a person, then you can take it from there.
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The origin of body art tattoo actually dates back from several ages ago, as opposed to the belief that tattoo art is only recently established out of what other people regard to as street art. The word tattoo is itself a term that has existed in many cultures, the term being translated or coming from several languages as well. For instance in Chinese language, the word Ta means to strike something or the word Tatau means to mark.

An tangible evidence to the notion that body art tattoo has already served humanity for ages is the frozen body of a man, believed to be five thousand year old, found on a mountaintop between Austria and Italy in 1991. The frozen body was discovered to be marked with around 60 tattoos from his waist down to the legs.

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