Tattoos first appeared on a man from 4,000 B.C. in Austria in a frozen glacier. His remains showed evidence of tattooing on his body. From then on, tattooing has been a major part of human life. Tattooing did not appear as a widely used ritual until a few thousand years ago. It has been said that ancient Egyptians used tattoos. The ancient Romans used tattoos as a way to identify slaves. The ancient Japanese, and Mediterranean ’s tattooed their criminals, often by using different symbols to identify what crime they committed. For many hundreds of years several cultures across the world used tattooing as a way to identify a certain people. Some cultures used them to show who they were as a people, while others used them to outcast members of society such criminals or slaves. Bottom line is that tattooing brought cultures and subcultures together and set them apart as well by using these distinct markings. Tattooing is a permanent left on the body that cannot be erased. This is why tattooing was made as a cultural symbol of showing permanent loyalty. When a person of a certain culture gets their tattoo it symbolizes their permanent devotion to that group that they belong to. They used the tattoo to convey a message to others that they were proud of who they were or whom they believed in and were willing to die for it. The other use of the tattoo was quite different with those that were condemned as criminals. Ancient or even some more modern societies would tattoo their criminals in order to set them apart from the non-tattooed people of society. This was how tattooing developed it’s darker side as it made it’s way into the criminal world. As several inmates in prisons were tattooed or branded, they soon would discover that they had a common ground, they were all criminals with the same mark on their bodies and were ousted by the rest of society. Eventually some of the inmates would begin to form bonds and gangs based upon their criminal status, and the tattoo was their symbol that identified members of the underworld. As years would pass, the gang tattoos would be altered in order for them to break off into separate gangs once tattooing was no longer used for prisoners in most countries. By about the 19th century tattooing became strictly a prisoner, gang member, or criminal trait in most non-third world countries. A permanent mark put on the body became a sign of loyalty to an organization, and because that tattoo is permanent, it symbolizes that the loyalty to the gang is permanently important. In earlier gangs, gang members would have the same exact symbol tattooed on them as opposed to more modern day gangs that will tend to tattoo their own interpretation of the gang’s symbols. The need to artfully redesign the gang’s tattoo shows that more modern day gang members want to fell a sense of individuality while still pledging utmost loyalty to the organization. The gang tattoo has now become a walking mural that attracts people’s interest that are not in the gang. The different styles of tattoo can indirectly inform the public that, that gang member is showing that he/she is a part of the gang but still has their own interests. This also shows a break away of traditional same tattoo gangs that prevailed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.