This question occured to me as I was playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. The setting of that game includes various fictional tribal cultures and each culture has a unique facepaint and bodypaint style. Aloy, the main character, even has the option of wearing different face paints, something that was exoanded upon in the sequel Horizon: Forbidden West.

This got me thinking:

Facepainting and bodypainting seem to be almost synonomous with "tribal." No matter where you look in the world, it seems that everywhere exists or has existed an indigenous tribal culture that uses at least some form of facepaint or bodypaint, even if it's just used in a select few ceremonies.

The Picts. Various tribes in Siberia. Various tribes in North America. The Aztecs. The Maori.

Those are just a few examples of indigenous tribal cultures using tattoes, from vastly different corners of the world.

So how come this is such a common occurence among tribal cultures? How come this is such a global phenomena? And why did most other cultures stop tattooing?