--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "guestu5er" <guestuser.0x9357@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> >Now if this is related, we can see that slaves here were originally
> >public rustic slaves, doing sacred work in the (public? sacred?)
> >fields.
>
> If tattooing was used for stigma & the like, then what about those
> slaves of various provenances to whom ornamental tattoo belonged
> to their culture? Inter alia, Scythians, Thracians, Dacians also
> had tattoos.
>
> Those tattoos were works of art - they must have had some effect
> in the Roman Empire and Greece.
>
> Have a look at the Scythian tattoo art samples (they look so
> refined and "modern"!), on the skin of "*hursha-riding warriors:
>
> http://www.tattooheaven.com/CentAsia.html
> http://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2012/01/kadiz-and-hill-people-tattoos.html
>
> Image in chap. 5 is that of a Scythian warrior's mummy unearthed
> in Siberia by a German-Russian team (coord. by prof. Parzinger):
>
http://listverse.com/2010/01/05/top-10-interesting-facts-about-the-scythians/
>
> Seemingly those Scythian warriors always got horse and deer tattoo
> motifs on their shoulders.
Ponder the following:
Would the fact that some society marks some enslaved members with a certain type of tatoo stop others from getting other tatoos?
Here in Denmark I've seen people with three dots in a triangle on the loose skin between thumb and index finger; this was called, as I recall, the 'bum mark', the sign that you are a bum. It doesn't stop the owners from having others, less distinctly signifying tatoos.
I also saw recently on TV (National Geographic channel, I believe) a Russian inmate of a prison camp state that Russian criminals after appr. 1980 choose a more narrative style of tatoos instead of the old school one of tatoos with fixed significance.
> BTW, the much older mummy of "Ãtzi" also has some abstract tattoos,
> that look like some "cypher". :-)
Flensburg style point system? ;-)
On the subject of old corpses,
http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grauballemanden
'hans sidste måltid bestod af flere forskellige kornarter, bl.a. byg, emmerhvede og havre, samt frø fra over 60 forskellige andre urter og græsser.'
His last meal being composed of so many strange herbs has meant it was interpreted as a sacred Henkersmahlzeit. To me it looks more like he was on the run when the enemies of the ancien regime
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grauballe_Man#Life
'His hands were smooth and did not show evidence of hard work, indicating that Grauballe Man was not employed in hard labour such as farming.[4]'
caught up with him.
Torsten