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Alright, I'll admit it; I'm a girl that at one point sported a mohawk and actually got away with it. After a messy breakup with my so called "street punk" boyfriend in eleventh grade, I decided to show him just how punk rock I was. So I took an electric razor and shaved the sides of my head, creating a long strip down the middle and keeping the bangs and little pieces in front of my ears. Needless to say, my mohawk was a lot bigger than his was, and I felt pretty cool at the time. I've even considered adopting my 'hawk again; I got a lot of compliments on it and miss it terribly!

However, little did my friends and I know as we wore our mohawks and rocked out to '70's punk bands like the Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols, that the mohawk had origins far past those of Sid Vicious and Jelly Biafra. In fact, the earliest known mohawk dates back nearly 2,300 years ago. It was discovered on a body, known as the Clonycavan Man, by a peat farmer in Dublin Ireland; the mohawk well preserved and held together with imported plant oil and pine resin from France or Spain. While this may be the oldest known mohawk, historically this extreme hairstyle is more often associated with the Native Americans. It had often been thought to have originated within the Mahican and Mohawk tribes, however, we now know that the Wyandot were most likely the first to begin wearing it. This is not to say that other Native American tribes didn't wear their hair in the mohawk. Many historical accounts have stated that in times of war, the Mohawk men cut their hair into 'hawks as well.

The mohawk was adopted into modern culture as early as World War II, when Allied Airborne soldiers, specifically the 101st Airborne Division, cut their hair into mohawks. Soldiers during the Vietnam war also were known to cut their hair into mohawks, which was part of the inspiration for Travis Bickle's famous haircut in Martin Scorsese's 1976 film, "Taxi Driver". A Vietnam vet himself, Bickle cuts his hair into a mohawk halfway through the movie; symbolizing his step over the edge and into insanity. While Bickle is the film's protagonist, he is clearly crazy and very anti-government. A lonely anarchist, Bickle may have served as the inspiration for many young punk rockers in the 1970s, as they picked up their electric razors and shaved the sides of their head. Mohawks were extremely tall and fanned out, held together with so much glue and gel that they almost seemed sharp. It was a perfect hairstyle for this new

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