View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-makes-tattoos-permanent-claudia-aguirre The earliest recorded tattoo was found on a Peruvian mummy in 6000 BC. That's some old ink! And considerin...
========== Tattoos have often been presented in popular media as either marks
of the dangerous and deviant or trendy youth fads. But while tattoo styles come and go, and their meaning has differed
greatly across cultures, the practice is as old
as civilization itself. Decorative skin markings have
been discovered in human remains all over the world, with the oldest found on a Peruvian
mummy dating back to 6,000 BCE. But have you ever wondered
how tattooing really works? You may know that we shed our skin, losing about 30-40,000
skin cells per hour. That's about 1,000,000 per day. So, how come the tattoo doesn't
gradually flake off along with them? The simple answer
is that tattooing involves getting pigment deeper into the skin than the outermost l...