A deciding factor for the people of these islands to be tattooed was acceptance in the afterlife.
On Timor men would tattoo themselves during burial feasts, partly to pass the time, and partly because they believed the images would stay dark if applied at a wake. When the inhabitants of the Solor, east of Flores, arrived in the afterlife without tattoos, they would be chased away by the souls there. People on the small island Roti, south of Timor, believed that tattooed figures were exchanged for worms, the food of the dead. The worms belonged to the god of the earth, who would only exchange them for tattoos with which he adorned himself. The larger the person, the more food was required, and thus the more tattoos he or she had.
Generally, the tattoos consisted mainly of dots, crosses, chevrons and arabesques; only very rarely were they representations of people or animals. In the mountainous regions of Lerek, an island east of Flores, women tattooed their entire faces, shoulders and breasts with dark blue figures, the largest of which was called täna (ship).