If the impulse to create art is a defining sign of humanity, the body may well have been the first canvas. Alongside paintings on cave walls visited by early people over 30,000 years ago, we find handprints, ochre deposits, and ornaments. And because the dead were often buried with valuable possessions and provisions for the afterlife, ancient burials reveal that people have been tattooing, piercing, painting, and shaping their bodies for millennia.

All of the major forms of body art known today appear in the ancient world, and there is no evidence indicating a single place of origin for particular techniques. Like people today, ancient peoples used body art to express identification with certain people and distinction from others. Through body art, members of a group could define the ideal person and highlight differences between individuals and groups. In the past, as today, body art may have been a way of communicating ideas about the afterlife and about the place of the individual in the universe.
Body painting can transform a person into a spirit, a work of art, another gender or even a map of a sacred place. It can emphasize visual appeal, express allegiance or provide a protective and empowering coating. Protective body paints often feature in initiation rituals, weddings and funerals -- all occasions of transition and of spiritual danger. People everywhere adorn the living, and some also treat the dead, with body paint. To make body paint, pigments composed of plant extracts or mineral clays and powders can be mixed with vegetable oil or animal fat. Throughout history, the substances used for body paint have been important trade items. Ochre, camwood, cinnebar, and kaolin were traded throughout Asia, Africa and Europe.

Henna, used as a temporary skin dye, was widely traded in the Muslim world along with patterns and designs used to apply it. Commercially manufactured body paints, now available in a wider palette, may be adopted for their visual appeal but they rarely take on the symbolic significance of natural paints and dyes.