Kids as young as 18 months old were given facial tattoos in the Nile Valley region 1,400 years ago, archaeologists discovered while studying mummified bodies in Sudan. What's more, the practice coincided with the introduction of Christianity to the region known as Nubia.
"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," study lead author Anne Austin, an archaeologist at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, told Live Science.
