Before the arrival of the Europeans, the language of the Polynesians was not written, only orally. The designs of the tattoo was to express the identity and the personality. They were indicating the social range in the hierarchy, the symbols of the nature, the maturity and the genealogy. In the company tahitiana ancient, practically all the individuals, from the puberty, were tattooed.

 

The return of the prohibited art:

 

a little time after the arrival of the missionaries, the practice was strictly prohibited. It was alone recently, initially of the 80s, that the art of the tatau conocio a renaissance. The Polynesians resumed his relation with his cultural inheritance and they are proud of his identity.  

 

 

 In fact the term "tattoo" (tatoo in English, declared tatú) has an origin Polynesian. More concretely in the word polinesia "ta" that means to throb or in the expression "tau-tau" used to speak about the shock between two bones. The style Moko Maorí of New Zealand, for example, was a tribal tattoo that he was identifying to every individual and his status inside a group. It was doing the only and unmistakable person. The more complicated it was the design of the major tattoo was the ascent in his social range. They were tattooed from the head to the feet, began at the age of 8 and it was a slow and painful process; the tattooed were embellishing and renewing during the whole life.