The History of Skincare: From Ancient Oils to Modern Science

Around 1550 BCE, an Egyptian scribe recorded hundreds of medical prescriptions on an eighteen-meter papyrus scroll. The document, later known as the Ebers Papyrus, was densely packed with formulations: a mixture of beeswax and plant oils to reduce wrinkles, a chemical peel recipe to remove blemishes, and preparations to protect skin from the arid desert climate.^[1] These were not beauty guides. They were medical records.

This fact reveals a paradox that recurs throughout the history of skincare. The act of caring for skin has always straddled the boundary between treatment and beauty, and in every era that boundary has been continually redrawn according to the medicine, climate, trade, and aesthetic ideals of the time. The moisturizers, sunscreens, retinols, and hyaluronic acids lining today’s shelves are the product of thousands of years of negotiating that boundary.

Ancient Skin Care: The Origins of Medicine and Beauty

Egypt: Skin Science Born in the Desert

The ancient Egyptians had clear reasons to pay attention to skin. Intense sunlight and dry desert winds caused rapid skin damage, and not only royalty and nobility but ordinary laborers invested significant effort in skin care. The Ebers Papyrus is considered by dermatology historians to be one of the oldest known medical texts relating to the skin.^[1]

Egyptians used olive oil, castor oil, and moringa oil as basic moisturizers. These oils were effective at forming a skin moisture barrier and preventing dryness.^[2] Aloe vera was used for wound healing and its soothing properties, while myrrh and frankincense served as anti-inflammatory agents to ease wrinkles and skin irritations.^[2]

Notable is the custom of applying malachite, a copper and lead compound, around the eyes. Though primarily known as a cosmetic practice, modern research has revealed that malachite actually possesses antimicrobial properties that inhibit bacterial growth. In a delta environment prone to infectious disease, this practice may have unintentionally served to protect the skin around the eyes.^[3]

Greece and Rome: Where Philosophy Met Dermatology

Ancient Greece was one of the first civilizations to attach moral and philosophical meaning to skin care. Clear, even skin was regarded as evidence of health and disciplined living, while skin problems were seen as signs of inner imbalance. Hippocrates, the “father of medicine,” used skin condition as a diagnostic tool and prescribed oat and honey treatments for acne.^[3]

The most important figure in skincare history, however, is the second-century Roman physician Galen of Pergamon. He combined rose water, beeswax, and olive oil to create the first emulsion cream. The product was called “cold cream” because it produced an evaporative cooling sensation when applied to the skin.^[4] This recipe, revised and refined over the centuries, remained the foundational prototype of moisturizing creams for nearly two thousand years.

The Romans created a systematic skin-care culture through their public bathhouses, the thermae. The practice of applying olive oil after bathing and then scraping off the oil along with dead skin cells and impurities using a metal scraper called a strigil is strikingly similar to the modern concept of double cleansing.^[3]

Ayurveda and East Asia: The Philosophy of Inner and Outer Balance

In the Indian Ayurvedic tradition, skin care was never merely a matter of external treatment. Skin condition was seen as a reflection of the body’s overall dosha balance, so food, sleep, and meditation were incorporated as parts of skin care.^[5] The golden spice turmeric has been used in skin care for more than four thousand years, and the effects of its active compound curcumin have been confirmed by modern science.^[5] The ancient Indian preparation Haldi Ubtan — a paste of turmeric, chickpea flour (besan), and mustard oil — is considered one of the oldest skincare products in the world.^[5]

In China, pearl powder was used to improve skin luminosity well before the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). The amino acids and calcium found in pearls were believed to promote skin regeneration and frequently appeared in the beauty formulas of empresses and nobility.^[6] In Japan, court women and geisha used rice bran (komenuka) as a facial cleanser and exfoliant, and applied camellia oil (tsubaki oil) to add luster to skin and hair.^[7] Rice bran contains inositol, B vitamins, and gamma-oryzanol — nutrients beneficial to skin health — and this tradition forms the roots of modern J-beauty ingredient philosophy.

From the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period: The Age of Distillation and Herbs

How Islamic Medicine Transformed Skincare

During the period when medieval European medicine stagnated under the influence of religion and superstition, the Islamic world was making rapid advances in scientific methodology. At the center of this was Ibn Sina (known in Europe as Avicenna), an Iranian physician of the tenth and eleventh centuries. His work The Canon of Medicine (Qanun fi al-Tibb), completed in 1025 and translated into Latin in the twelfth century, served as the standard textbook at European medical schools for hundreds of years.^[8]

The Canon of Medicine contained systematic descriptions of skin care. Ibn Sina recorded recipes for anti-wrinkle creams, prescriptions for preventing hair loss, and treatments for skin pigmentation and blemishes. His more important contribution, however, was the development of distillation technology. The steam distillation method he established enabled the mass production of plant-based aromatic waters such as rose water and lavender water, and this technology later became the foundation of the European herbal cosmetics industry.^[8]

Medieval Europe and the Renaissance: From Herb Gardens to Cosmetics

In medieval Europe, skin care was practiced primarily in the herb gardens of monasteries. Nuns and monks cultivated lavender, rosemary, and sage to produce ointments and facial waters, with little distinction made between whether these were medicines or cosmetics. Lavender water was used not only for its fragrance but as a prescription for calming skin inflammation.^[9]

During the Renaissance, skincare began to take hold as the exclusive domain of aristocratic women. In fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Europe, pale and smooth skin was the ideal standard of beauty, as it signified membership in a class that did not perform outdoor labor. The practice of applying highly toxic lead powder to the face for skin whitening caused serious health problems, yet the fashion persisted for hundreds of years. The willingness to accept risk in the name of beauty is a theme that recurs throughout the history of skincare.^[9]

The Industrial Age: From Cold Cream to Mass Production

The Chemical Revolution of the Nineteenth Century

From the late eighteenth century, as chemistry became established as a serious scientific discipline, the understanding of skincare product ingredients deepened rapidly. One of the most important changes was the reinvention of cold cream. Galen’s original recipe consisted of three ingredients — rose water, beeswax, and olive oil — but in the nineteenth century, borax was added. When dissolved in water, borax reacts with the fatty acids in beeswax to act as an emulsifier, forming a far more stable emulsion.^[4]

From the mid-nineteenth century, cheaper and more stable petrolatum and mineral oils began to replace expensive olive and almond oils. This was the pivotal shift that gave rise to industrial skincare products. The Perfect Cold Cream from Daggett & Ramsdell, launched in New York in 1893, is recorded as the first commercial cold cream to use petrolatum as its primary ingredient. With the subsequent entry of brands such as Pond’s into the market, the era of mass-produced skincare products had arrived.^[4]

The Study of UV Radiation: Is the Sun an Enemy or a Friend?

As late as the early twentieth century, tanned skin was regarded in most cultures as a mark of the laboring class. In the 1920s, however, Coco Chanel’s fashion for suntanning inverted this perception in the West, making bronzed skin a symbol of leisurely vacation. It was in this cultural context that the scientific study of ultraviolet radiation began.

The first UVB filter was developed in 1928, and Swiss chemist Franz Greiter, who suffered a severe sunburn while climbing in the Alps in 1938, was inspired by the experience to develop and launch a sunscreen called Gletscher Crème in 1946.^[10] In 1962 he devised the concept of the Sun Protection Factor (SPF), and starting from his original product with SPF 2, today’s complex sun protection systems evolved.^[10] When the U.S. FDA officially adopted SPF as a standard efficacy measure in 1978, sunscreen became a globally standardized skincare category.^[10]

The Twentieth-Century Revolution in Skin Science

Retinoids: The Anti-Aging Ingredient Born from Coincidence

One of the most dramatic discoveries in the history of skincare science came about by chance. In the late 1960s, Dr. Albert Kligman, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, was researching retinoic acid (tretinoin) as a treatment for acne. Retinoic acid, an acidic derivative of vitamin A, had the effect of removing unnecessary cell layers from the skin surface in the course of treating keratinization disorders, and his hypothesis was that applying this principle would also be effective against acne.^[11]

When this acne treatment, approved by the FDA under the name Retin-A in 1971, was prescribed to middle-aged patients, an unexpected side effect — or rather, a change that could hardly be called a side effect — appeared. Fine lines diminished, pigmentation lightened, and overall skin texture improved.^[11] By the 1980s, these anti-aging effects had been academically validated, and retinoids remain to this day one of the most thoroughly scientifically tested anti-aging skincare ingredients.

It should be noted, however, that Kligman’s research casts an important ethical shadow. Some of his early experiments were conducted on prison inmates and do not meet the standards of modern research ethics. The fact that the advancement of skincare science has not always rested on a clean history is worth keeping in mind.^[11]

Hyaluronic Acid and Niacinamide: A New Ingredient Paradigm

In 1934, American biochemists Karl Meyer and John Palmer isolated a new molecule from the vitreous humor of bovine eyes. Named hyaluronic acid, this substance was capable of absorbing and retaining up to one thousand times its own weight in water.^[12] In vitro synthesis became possible in 1964, and by the 1970s it was first being applied in skincare products. Initially extracted from rooster combs, it is today produced through fermentation.^[12]

Niacinamide (the amide form of vitamin B3) entered skincare by a more circuitous route. When biochemist Conrad Elvehjem at the University of Wisconsin isolated nicotinic acid and its amide form, niacinamide, from liver extracts in 1937, it was as part of research aimed at finding the nutrient responsible for curing pellagra, a disease that was devastating the American South.^[13] Its skincare efficacy was not seriously studied until the 2000s, when research confirmed a range of benefits including strengthened skin barrier function, sebum control, pore minimization, and inhibition of pigmentation — making it a key ingredient in modern skincare.^[13]

The Modern Skincare Industry: Where Science Meets Culture

The Discovery of Photoaging and the Shift to a Prevention Paradigm

In 1969, Albert Kligman introduced another important concept. He systematically described the structural skin damage caused by solar UV radiation and coined the term “photoaging.”^[10] This discovery fundamentally transformed the skincare paradigm. It became clear that skin aging was not simply an inevitable consequence of growing older but was substantially accelerated by an external factor: UV exposure. Sunscreen began to be redefined, from a simple burn-prevention product into “the most effective means of anti-aging.”

In 1980, UVA filters were introduced, and in 1992 a UVA star-rating system was developed, advancing sunscreens from products that blocked only UVB to broad-spectrum products covering long-wavelength UVA as well.^[10]

J-Beauty and K-Beauty: A New Philosophy from Asia

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the center of gravity in skincare expanded beyond Europe and America to encompass Asia. Japanese skincare (J-beauty) developed a distinctive direction by combining centuries of tradition with modern chemistry. Rice extracts, camellia oil (tsubaki oil), and green tea extracts — rooted in the geisha’s rice-bran cleansing ritual — carried forward as the core ingredient philosophy of modern Japanese skincare brands.^[7] Shiseido (founded 1872), a pioneering brand combining Eastern and Western ingredient traditions, led the globalization of J-beauty.

The global spread of Korean skincare (K-beauty) was even more dramatic. The concept of the “10-step Korean skincare routine,” introduced by the American beauty magazine Into The Gloss in 2014, generated an explosion of interest in the West.^[14] However, the “10-step routine” was not something generally practiced in Korea from the start. Korean women’s traditional routines ran to about six or seven steps, and the trend has more recently been moving toward simplification to two or three steps.^[14] The “10-step routine” is closer to a convenient framing device, invented to introduce Western readers to the variety of skincare product categories that exist in Korea.

Yet K-beauty’s impact on global skincare was substantial. Product categories such as essence, ampoule, sheet mask, and cleansing oil were introduced to the global market, and the philosophy of “protecting the skin barrier” and “prevention-centered skincare” established itself as an alternative to the Western approach of “solving problems with powerful ingredients.”^[14] The global spread of K-beauty accelerated explosively from the mid-2010s onward, and by the 2020s Korea had positioned itself as one of the world’s leading exporters of cosmetics.^[14]

Science-Based Skincare and the Future

The most distinctive feature of twenty-first-century skincare is the democratization of ingredient information. As consumers began reading ingredient lists, looking up clinical studies, and verifying efficacy for themselves, “scientific evidence” replaced “brand authority” as the standard for choosing products. Brands that led with individual active ingredients — niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, peptides, AHA/BHA — saw rapid growth.

At the same time, microbiome research is opening a new frontier in skincare. As the influence of the millions of microorganisms living on the skin’s surface on skin health has become better understood, the concept of “protecting beneficial skin bacteria” has emerged as a skincare goal no less important than moisturization or sun protection. The skincare prescriptions that an Egyptian scribe wrote on papyrus thirty-five hundred years ago and the microbiome experiments being conducted in twenty-first-century dermatology laboratories are different eras’ answers to the same question: “How do we keep skin healthy?”

Conclusion

Looking back over the history of skincare, one peculiar fact emerges: technology has advanced dazzlingly, but what we ask of our skin has not changed. Moisturization, cleansing, sun protection, anti-aging — the four goals targeted by the prescriptions of the Ebers Papyrus remain entirely valid for categorizing the function of any product on today’s shelves.

What has changed is the way we pursue those goals, which has at different times taken the form of medicine, culture, and fashion. Galen’s cold cream survived nearly two thousand years not simply because it was effective, but because it was reinterpreted with different materials and different names in each era. The fact that retinol began as an acne treatment and became the emblem of anti-aging ingredients, and that K-beauty arrived in the West wearing the costume of ten steps, all tells the same story. The science of skincare accumulates. The culture of skincare translates.