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Illustration by National Geographic

This Marquesan design includes repeated forms conveying the immensity of a clear sky and a great journey.

This spiral shape represents a fiddlehead fern, symbolizing the start of a new life in Marquesan tattoo culture.

The Marquesan dancing flame symbolizes the light that keeps death at bay.

The islands that make up Polynesia are culturally diverse with unique tattoo traditions and symbols. This graphic from Teiki Huukena’s Polynesian Tattoo Dictionary: Marquesas Islands shows a peka ‘enana cross. One of the most popular Marquesan motifs, it represents a human form with the four limbs depicted as curving lines inside of a block shape.