A team of researchers in Peru looked at tattoos on more than 100 mummified bodies from the Chancay culture, which inhabited the region from 900 to 1533. Michael Pittman, a paleobiologist at the ...

In the cases where the skin is preserved – usually mummification – any extant tattoos can become hard to see as the skin darkens and turns leathery, and ink lightens and bleeds into surrounding tissue ...

Tattoos were a prevalent art form in pre-Hispanic South America, as attested by the discovery of mummified human remains in the region with preserved skin decoration that date back centuries ...