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Some Chinese noblemen were using cosmetic face cream 2700 years ago. Archaeologists have found an ornate bronze jar containing the remains of a face cream, which was made from a mixture of animal fat and a rare substance called moonmilk that is found in caves.

The discovery is the earliest evidence of a Chinese man using cosmetics, although there is older evidence of Chinese women doing so.

In 2017 and 2018, Yimin Yang at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues excavated a site called Liujiawa in northern China. It dates from the (771 to 476 BC) of Chinese history, centuries before the country was first unified by the Qin dynasty. During this period, Liujiawa was the capital city of a small state called Rui.

In the tomb of a nobleman, who was buried with funerary bronze weapons, the researchers found a beautiful bronze jar. Inside were lumps of a soft, yellow-white material. They immediately suspected that this was cosmetic cream. Later chemical analyses confirmed this and revealed two main ingredients.

The first was animal fat, which came from a ruminant animal that had been fed lots of grass-like plants. Co-author Bin Han, also at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, says this probably came from cattle raised in pens.

The second ingredient was a form of watery calcium carbonate called moonmilk. It is a soft, white, creamy substance that forms inside certain caves.

The cream would have made the man’s face white, says Yang. The use of moonmilk may have been influenced by the early Taoist School, a group of thinkers who were fascinated by caves and believed that some cave minerals had magical properties. Yet the use of cosmetics may have simultaneously been a way for aristocrats to stand out.

The face cream is the earliest example associated with a Chinese man. The next well-documented examples are almost 1000 years later, dating to the Three Kingdoms Period (220 to 280 AD), says Han.

However, evidence of Chinese women using cosmetics goes back further. In 2016, Yang’s team studied , which were found buried with women. Elsewhere, ancient Egyptians were using cosmetics as early as 2000 BC.