And now a bit from bridge piercing history. The first person known to the general public to have a bridge piercing was Erl van Aken – a body modification pioneer from the 80ies and 90ies.

As you can see this guy has a hell lot of piercings on his body (would you like to see him naked – click here! ) and for his bridge piercing he’s been using both bridge rings and bridge barbells.

But I’d suggest,  and I think that any professional body piercer will tell you this, it’s better go for some body jewelry that is better suited for surface piercings. You see, the bridge piercing is essentially a surface piercing and it has quite a high rate of migration. As you can naturally imagine, nostrils and septum can’t really push the nose piercing out and your body is kind of forced to keep the piercing in.

However, the bridge of the nose is a place where both sides of the piercing project outside the body on the same surface, hence the name ‘surface piercing’ and the high rejection rate. It’s easier for the body to push the piercing out rather than heal the wound forming a nice hole with a new skin it.

Anyway, if you take good care of your bridge piercing and follow the bridge piercing afercare guidelines, you should be on the safe side. The initial bridge jewelry is also an essential element to make sure the fresh piercing heals properly and you don’t have to worry it would leave a scar afer rejection, as may happen.

So suface bars, curved barbells and body jewelry made of supple materials like bioplast and PTFE would be the best option if you consider getting a bridge piercing for yourself.

But now let’s look at how people actually came to an idea of piercing their nostrils, nose cartilages and all other areas around nose.

Historically nose piercing has been first mentioned even in the Bible and it supposedly dates back to around 4000 years ago. There’s a hint pointing to a nose piercing in an old Hebrew word “Shanf” which can be also interpreted as a “nose ring”.

But we don’t have to assume that this is the earliest occurrence of nose piercing, at least I don’t think so. As we all know the tribes all across the world starting from Indians in America and ending with Papuans had countless traditions involving body piercing and tattooing.

Therefore it shouldn’t be a surprise to find out that septum piercing, for instance, was very popular among Native Americans like Shawnees and in New Guinea and Australia as well.

Those guys from the warrior tribes usually would have huge stretched septum piercings carrying a wooden or bone-made nose shaft and therefore they’d look even fiercer in a battle. And when every day poses a possible threat to your life, you’d do everything that gives you an advantage, wouldn’t you? J

The Bedouin tribes of Middle East and Berber and Beja tribes in Africa also used to adorn women’s nostrils with jewelry and noticeably, the bigger the nose piercing was, the wealthier the respective family was.

However, if you were asked where the nose piercing most likely originates from, I bet you’d say it’s India. Well, it’s not far from truth! Nose piercing is indeed very popular in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and I’d say that is exactly where the hippies back in the 60ies got the idea of their nose piercings!

But if you would like to find out about more sophisticated and weird nose piercing types – check out these kinds of nose piercing – bridge piercing, rhino (or nasal tip) piercing, Austin bar, nasallang and septril nose piercing.