<P> Fingerprints have been found on ancient Babylonian clay tablets, seals, and pottery . They have also been found on the walls of Egyptian tombs and on Minoan, Greek, and Chinese pottery, as well as on bricks and tiles from ancient Babylon and Rome . Some of these fingerprints were deposited unintentionally by the potters and masons as a natural consequence of their work, and others were made in the process of adding decoration . However, on some pottery, fingerprints have been impressed so deeply into the clay that they were possibly intended to serve as an identifying mark by the maker . </P> <P> Fingerprints were used as signatures in ancient Babylon in the second millennium BCE . In order to protect against forgery, parties to a legal contract would impress their fingerprints into a clay tablet on which the contract had been written . In Ancient India some texts called Naadi were written by a Rishi called Agastya where the text is said to predict the past, present and the future lives of all humans from thumb print. the Naadi palm leaves are located based on the thumb impressions (right for men, left for women). This ancient Indian system of astrology was called Nadi astrology . By 246 BCE, Chinese officials were impressing their fingerprints into the clay seals used to seal documents . With the advent of silk and paper in China, parties to a legal contract impressed their handprints on the document . Sometime before 851 CE, an Arab merchant in China, Abu Zayd Hasan, witnessed Chinese merchants using fingerprints to authenticate loans . By 702, Japan allowed illiterate petitioners seeking a divorce to "sign" their petitions with a fingerprint . </P> <P> Although ancient peoples probably did not realize that fingerprints could uniquely identify individuals, references from the age of the Babylonian king Hammurabi (reigned 1792 - 1750 BCE) indicate that law officials would take the fingerprints of people who had been arrested . During China's Qin Dynasty, records have shown that officials took hand prints, foot prints as well as finger prints as evidence from a crime scene . In China, around 300 CE, handprints were used as evidence in a trial for theft . By 650, the Chinese historian Kia Kung - Yen remarked that fingerprints could be used as a means of authentication . In his Jami al - Tawarikh (Universal History), the Persian physician Rashid - al - Din Hamadani (also known as "Rashideddin", 1247--1318) refers to the Chinese practice of identifying people via their fingerprints, commenting: "Experience shows that no two individuals have fingers exactly alike ." In Persia at this time, government documents may have been authenticated with thumbprints . </P> <P> In 1665, the Italian physician Marcello Malpighi (1628--1694) briefly mentioned, in his De externo tactus organo anatomica observatio, the existence of patterns of ridges and sweat glands on the fingertips . In 1684, the English physician, botanist, and microscopist Nehemiah Grew (1641--1712) published the first scientific paper to describe the ridge structure of the skin covering the fingers and palms . In 1685, the Dutch physician Govard Bidloo (1649--1713) published a book on anatomy which also illustrated the ridge structure of the fingers . A century later, in 1788, the German anatomist Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer (1747--1801) recognized that fingerprints are unique to each individual . </P>

When was it discovered that fingerprints were unique