History of Piercings

Considering that the earlobe is one the thinnest part of the human body, it’s not a surprise that it is one of the most common places for body piercings. In general, we can differentiate between two varieties; thin ornaments which are passed through the body perforation and then have a decorative top part facing forward, and larger jewelry which stretches the hole and shape of the ear lobe so the entire ear and the piece of body jewellery become a form of body art. Ear piercing have been practiced in basically all cultures around the world since historical times. And also ear stretching was a very common practice for traditional tribes before they came in contact with modern civilization.

In the Solomon Island, it’s common for men in tribal communities to practice ear piercing as well as ear stretching. Due to how inaccessible and remote these islands were in the historical times, it can be assumed that this practice dates back several thousands of years.

In Indochina, there are several tribes living in the mountainous area of Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar such as the Karen and Lahu tribe as well as some small lesser known tribes in northern Vietnam where ears are slowly stretched over time by inserting plugs made from natural materials or silver or by wearing heavy ear weights.

In India and Nepal, many old images and statues of Buddha feature elongated ears and it is believed by some scholars that this is due to the fact of wearing ear weights. Since Buddha started his life as a local prince, this is plausible since it was common practice at that time for people of high social status to wear ear weight made out of solid gold.6

In ancient Egypt, ear piercing and ear stretching were common by the second intermediate period which means around 1670 BC. And since several mommies from that period are well preserved, we actually have the ability to still see their body modfications. One of the most famous Egyptian pharaohs is without a doubt Tutankhamun who reigned from 1333 BC until 1323 BC. When his mommy was inspected, the forensic experts found that his ears had been stretched to the size of 10mm or 00g. Also, in burial chamber from this period, we can see these ancient plugs between other burial gifts. 7

In Africa, girls from the Fulani tribe will have the ear pierced roughly at the age of 3 and will wear very large ornate earing by the age of entering into puberty.  And for people from the Masai tribe, ear stretching is fundamental part of their tribal heritage

In Europe, we have another very famous case of ear stretching during the early copper age at around 3260 BC. Of course we are talking about Ötzi, also called the Iceman. This is a frozen mommy which was found in 1991 in Austria and the end of a glacier. Due to the fact that his body had been conserved by freezing all soft tissues where perfectly preserved, when his remains where analyzed, it was found that he had his earlobes stretched to a size of about 6 – 7mm.

In more recent history around 1000 BC and until the arrival of the romans, the only tribe from which we have evidence of piercing are the Slavic tribes where evidences of ear rings have been found in several archeological excavation’s sites of that period.

In south America, in the Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador, we can find the Huaorani which practices ear stretching for women and men. They commonly use plugs made out of balsa wood as ear expanders. Another tribe which ear stretching is common is the Yanomami from Venezuela. Here after the piercing is stretched instead of wearing a solid plug, they wear a bunch of fur, leaves or flowers are inserted into the body perforation.