The earliest signs of human interest in self decoration appeared 30 000 years ago, when handprints, ochre deposits, and ornaments are found alongside cave paintings. Among the techniques shown are body painting (including henna decoration and makeup), body shaping, piercing, scarification, and tattooing. Organised in six major sections, with several short films, the exhibit traces body art through history, showing the techniques, the tools, the results, and the way other cultures looked at body art that was strange to them.

For beauty, as a sign of change or rebellion or conformity, to show status, to mark a moment, to be able to wear a certain ornament, to identify with spirits or ancestors or deities, to show group membership, to show gender distinctions.” Why do people alter their bodies, sometimes painfully and permanently? Enid Schildkrout, curator of the show and chair of the museum's division of anthropology, thinks there are many reasons: “To be human. “There is no known culture in which people don't do this, whether permanently or temporarily,” said Ellen V Futter, president of the museum.

Now a history of our ancestors' methods of painting and piercing their bodies over the past 30 000 years is on display in a wondrous, imaginative, and sometimes frightening exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. (see and Every time you shave, put on make up, or squeeze into tight jeans in an attempt to alter your appearance you are unwittingly following in the footsteps of your ancestors, who devised equally ingenious ways of doing the same thing.

American Museum of Natural History, New York, until

Images of cultural tribal body paint