Chilean Chinchorro Or Alpine Ötzi? Archaeologists Settle Debate Over World's Oldest Tattoos

Drawing of the face of El Morro mummy Mo-1 T28 C22, showing the dotted tattoo on his upper lip. Redrawn by A. Deter-Wolf after B. Arriaza (1988), Modelo Bioarqueologico Para la Busqueda y Acercamiento al Individuo Social. Chungara Revista de Antropología Chilena 21, 9–32, Figure 4A. (Image used with kind permission of Aaron Deter-Wolf.)

If you search the Guinness Book of World Records for tattoos, you come up with entries for the most-tattooed living people and for the oldest one in the world. Ötzi, the “Iceman” mummy found in the Alps in 1991, is often considered to have the oldest examples of tattoos ever found. Yet some scholars argue that a Chinchorro mummy found in Chile in 1983 is the real record-holder.  In a new article just out in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, an international team of archaeologists set out to settle the debate. [...] Forbes