Unlike other ways to change your appearance - hairstyles or makeup - a tattoo remains forever. It is no coincidence that in the eyes of many ancient peoples, its application was not an easy task. Once upon a time, the inhabitants of Borneo believed that their drawings acted like torches, illuminating the path for the dead in the pitch darkness of the kingdom of the dead. The ancient Greeks and Romans used tattoos as punishment. For the Altai Scythians, the tattoo served as the embodiment of the sacred text. How can we explain the modern popularity of body manipulation? Maybe primitive thinking has not left us forever? In the book of anthropologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences M.B. Mednikova, tattoos and other indelible signs of artificial origin on the human body are considered as a historical source. Evidence from archaeology, physical and social anthropology, folkloristics is involved, and monuments of ancient writing are analyzed. The book contains the development of original scientific ideas, presented, if possible, in a fairly popular manner, which will allow specialists in various fields of knowledge to use these data. The publication is intended for anthropologists, cultural scientists, historians, archaeologists and the widest range of readers.