The following is a brief excerpt from Tattoo History: A Source Book, by Stephen G. Gilbert now available in print.

Tattoo History Source Book: Professional Opinions.

Sir Joseph Banks was the first European on record who speculated as to the motives for tattooing among the natives of Polynesia. During his visit to Tahiti in 1769, Banks wrote: "What can be a sufficient inducement to suffer so much pain is difficult to say; not one Indian (though I have asked hundreds) would ever give me the least reason for it; possibly superstition may have something to do with it. Nothing else in my opinion could be a sufficient cause for so apparently absurd a custom." (see chapter 4, Joseph Banks).

The eminent German anthropologist Wilhelm Joest thought he had the answer. In his opinion tattooing was motivated not by superstition, but by vanity. The year 1887 saw the publication of Joest's Tätowiren, Narbenzeichnen und Körperbemalen: Ein Beitrag zur vergleichende Ethnologie. (Tattooing, Scarring and Body Painting: A Contribution to Comparative Ethnology.) In his introduction Joest informs his readers that he has researched his subject by first-hand observations of native tattooing in America, Asia, Indonesia and Africa, and by careful examination of accounts of tattooing in scholarly journals. Joest asks : how did tattooing originate, and why is it found in so many disparate cultures? The question, he thinks, is not difficult to answer. Tattooing, body painting, scarification, and all other forms of personal adornment are motivated by nothing more mysterious than the elemental desire of "natural man" to decorate the body.(1) Joest disagrees with those who maintain that tattooing has religious significance in ancient cultures, and warns his readers that this heresy "threatens to become generally accepted as fact in textbooks."(2) Joest wrote: In all of the islands I visited, I found no evidence to support the assertion that tattooing has any kind of religious significance. It is true that the actual process of tattooing is everywhere associated with certain ceremonies which are supposed to ensure the successful outcome of this painful operation... On closer examination, however, I found that the motives for tattooing were not religious, but were rather more closely related to the intimate association of the sexes. It is therefore easy to conclude that the primary motivation is that of personal adornment. The idea that one should undergo a painful operation for the sake of a god is completely inconsistent with the general attitude of the natives, who expect of their gods only benefits and, where possible, relief from pain. (3 ) (translated by SG)