Tattoo History -- It's actually less painful than being tattooed.
Really.

12,000 years ago | 3300 BCE | 2200 BCE | 1550 BCE | 400 BCE | 1769 AD

Captain Cook and the Location of Tahiti

In a happy coincidence, this previous form of the word actually meant "a rapid rhythmic rapping" and was used by military personnel (such as Cook and his crew) when referring to the call sounded before taps. The coincidence is a happy one because the sound of tattooing in Tahiti was, in fact, a rapid tapping where the set of needles, looking like a small rake, was hit with a stick to drive ink under the skin. Although the Tahitians called it tatau, Cook and his men likely substituted a near sound-alike word from their own background. The west was forever changed when these early sailors absorbed this part of Tahitian culture and brought tattooed natives and their own tattoos back with them. In an interesting side note, Cook was later killed on the beach in Hawaii some ten years later (on another voyage) at Kealakekua Bay during a quick altercation with locals over a small boat that had been taken.