Ancient Nubians Tattooed Toddlers 1,400 Years Ago and It’s Not Really Clear Why

Ancient Nubian tattoos on children reshape ideas about belief, care, and the body.

Along the Nile, in what is now Sudan, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that children (some barely past infancy) were tattooed more than 1,400 years ago.

Surprisingly, this breakthrough came from old remains found years ago. Using infrared light to peer beneath the surface of preserved skin, researchers revealed tattoos that had gone unnoticed for decades. The results suggest that tattooing in ancient Nubia was far more common than scholars once believed, and that it played a role in childhood, faith, and health.

Ancient Ink

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are based on a systematic survey of 1,048 individuals dating from 350 BCE to 1400 CE. Twenty-seven people showed clear or possible tattoos—nearly doubling the number previously documented from the ancient Nile Valley.

The remains came from three archaeological sites: Semna South, Qinifab, and Kulubnarti. All were excavated in the 1960s and 1970s and later housed at Arizona State University. Although scholars had studied them for years, many tattoos were simply too faint to see with the naked eye.

“I had known there were tattoos in the Semna South collection for quite some time,” said bioarchaeologist Brenda Baker. “I had always wanted to do much more of a systematic survey because a lot of them are not that visible to the naked eye.”

That changed when Anne Austin brought multispectral imaging to the project. Near-infrared light allows scientists to look just slightly below the skin’s surface. Under the lens, the ink literally emerges from the dark.

With the help of graduate researcher Tatijana Jovanović, the team identified 25 previously unknown tattooed individuals. At Kulubnarti, a medieval Christian community, the results were stunning. At least 19% of the population was tattooed. Most surprisingly, the team found ink on toddlers under age three. One child even had tattoos layered over older ones, suggesting they were marked repeatedly during their earliest years.

Faith, Healing, and Childhood

Why tattoo a toddler? The answer is not 100% clear, but it must have been connected to people’s faith.

In Kulubnarti, which was active between AD 650 and 1000, Christianity was the bedrock of society. Many of the tattoos featured dots and lines arranged in diamond patterns—likely representations of the cross.

“If the tattoos were a symbol of the wearer’s Christian faith, then it might have been important for parents to create permanent ways to mark their children as Christian,” Austin told Live Science. Such markings could have functioned like baptism. If so, they may represent the earliest evidence of Christian tattoo traditions in northeast Africa, possibly linked to practices still seen in the region today.

But the ink may have served a more practical, desperate purpose: healing.

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The researchers also found tattoos layered over older ones, even in young children. That pattern points to repetition. “We’re seeing superimposition of new tattoos over older tattoos,” Baker said. “That may be due to illness—something like malaria that causes recurrent fevers and headaches.”

Malaria has a long history in the Nile Valley, and ethnographic records elsewhere link tattooing to protection or healing. In two adults, tattoos appeared on the back, a placement that has been linked in other contexts to therapeutic practices.

The tattoos appear to have been made with small blades rather than needles, producing simple designs quickly. Austin cautioned against judging the practice by modern standards.

“The form of tattooing at Kulubnarti doesn’t seem any more extreme than piercing a toddler’s ears,” she said.

Tattooing is an old practice, seen on bodies from Ötzi the Iceman to Egyptian mummies. What makes Nubia unusual is that the tattoos were placed on children, pointing to how closely belief, health, and the body were linked early in life.