Scientists have made an incredible discovery after using lasers on 1,200-year-old mummies.
A team of researchers in Peru looked at tattoos on more than 100 mummified bodies from the Chancay culture, which inhabited the region from 900 to 1533.
Michael Pittman, a paleobiologist at the University of Hong Kong and co-author of the study, said: “Only 3 of these individuals were found to have high-detailed tattoos made up of fine lines only 0.1 – 0.2mm thick, which could only be seen with our new technique.”
The team’s technique involves laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF), which produces images based on fluorescence, revealing details that can be missed using ultraviolet (UV) light.
LSF makes the tattooed skin shine bright white, making the carbon-based black tattoo ink stand out more clearly. This helps with the issue of tattoos fading over time, which can obscure the design.
Pittman told LiveScience that the three tattoos revealed were “predominantly geometric patterns featuring triangles”. Other Chancay tattoos included vine-like and animal designs.
The culture is best known for its ceramics and textiles, which also utilise the geometric patterns found in the tattoos the team revealed.
The Chancay people were “kind of like House Frey from Game of Thrones,” said Kasia Szremski, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois, “in that they were waiting out the Chimu-Inka conflict [circa 1470] until they could see who had the advantage and join the winning side.”
According to Szremski, little is known about the social organization of the Chancay culture, which makes the study interesting and important.
“In many societies, tattoos are used to mark people with special status,” she said. “By better understanding what Chancay tattoos look like, we can start looking for patterns that may help us identify different types, classes or statuses of people.”
However, Aaron Deter-Wolf, an ancient tattoo expert at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, is not convinced that the LSF technique is useful.
He said that the study’s authors failed to include important details about the LSF technique and did not explain why it is better than currently used techniques, such as high-resolution infrared or multispectral imaging.
Deter-Wolf also took issue with the authors’ conclusion that two of the tattoos illustrated in their study were created by the puncture method, in which each ink dot was placed by hand.
He noted that the tattoos were created by incising short parallel lines in the skin with pigments rubbed in from the surface.
