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• Jewelry and other decorative goods (100,000 years ago)


  • Used "beads" in South Africa, Algeria, and Israel for identification
  • Communicated status of wealth, familial ties, and personal identity
• Personal


  • Something that belongs to someone "a private thing"
• Tattooing (2000BC)


  • Introduced in Ancient Egypt
  • Defined as "permanent marks or designs made on the body by the outline of pigment or dye through ruptures in the skin"
  • Used to distinguish individuals and establish recognition within clans
  • First form of written expression
• Methods of Personal Identification

  • Mutilation
  • Descriptive clothing
  • Measurement of the height (Quetele’s Method)
  • Photographic eye/Memory (Eugene Francois Vidoeq Method)
  • Photographing (Daguerreotyping)
• Old testament in the book of Leviticus 19:28: '"You shall not make any cutting in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you"'
• Personal identification involves identifying a person suspected of committing a crime or linking a suspect to other unsolved crimes. It also helps to identify victims of natural and man-made disasters
• Persons Memory


  First and most commonly used method to identify and distinguish features and characteristics of other humans such as their outward appearance or the sound of their voice
• Branding/scarification


  • Ancient Greeks branded their slaves with Delta
  • Romans used branding for gladiators and convicted criminals
  • French penal system used branding to identify thieves and slaves from the Galley
• Identification


  • An act of identifying, or state of being identified
• French penal system branding


  Identified thieves with a "V" mark on their right shoulder and "GAL" for Slaves from the Galley
• New testament in the book of Revelation 13:16-17: 'Not provided'