Jeeze, didn’t realize it started so early. No wonder unemployment has always so high since Biblical Times.
The Development and Inheritance of Polynesian Tattoos
Traditional Polynesian Tattooing ToolsThe tradition of Polynesian tattooing existed from 2000 years ago. In 18th century this operation was strictly banned by the Old Testament. In early 1980’s, tattooing started to get a renaissance. Since then many lost arts were retrieved by Polynesians. But due to the difficulty in sterilizing the traditional tools, the Ministry of Health banned tattooing in French Polynesia in 1986.
Although many years passed, tools and techniques of Polynesian tattooing have changed little. For a strictly traditional design, the skill gets handed from father to son, or master to disciple. Each tattoo artist, or tufuga, learned the craft over many years of serving as his master’s apprentice. They vertically passed their knowledge and rarely spread it widely because of its sacred nature.
http://www.apolynesiantattoo.com/polynesian-tattoo-history
Ta moko is the permanent marking of the face and body as traditionally practised by maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand.
Captain James Cook wrote in 1769:
The marks in general are spirals drawn with great nicety and even elegance. One side corresponds with the other. The marks on the body resemble foliage in old chased ornaments, convolutions of filigree work, but in these they have such a luxury of forms that of a hundred which at first appeared exactly the same no two were formed alike on close examination.[1][2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%81_moko