ANCIENT COSMETICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1931, Page 11 (Supplement)

ANCIENT COSMETICS.

RECORDS FROM ATLANTIS.

PERFUMES 3000 YEAHS OLD

(By JOHN GRANGE.}

Cosmetics Lave been used since the beginning of tlie race. If it seems an extravagant statement, records exist which indicate that the Atlanteans, a people who are said to have inhabited the lost land in the Atlantic Ocean some 25,000 years before the Christian era, used natural petroleum oil to aid in massage. Certainly it is possible to trace the development of cosmetics through all the ancient peoples of the earth. The Chinese had their system of cosmetics. You recall the pictures in your geography books of the Chinese ladies with bound feet; that mutilation of the feet was part of cosmetics. You also remember that the Chinese gentlemen of leisure had the habit of letting their nails grow without cutting and there were pictures in the same books of nail guards for the fingers of the mandarin. The Egyptian system of cosmetics had to do not only with the living but with the embalming of the dead. When tho tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen was opened, recently and his mummy unwrapped, the discoverers could still get the odour of the perfume substances used many thousands of years ago. The ancient Hebrews learned the art and the practice of cosmetics from the Egyptians. At that time cosmetics were part' and parcel of religious practices The perfume materials were _to be used only in religious ceremonies. The ancient Greeks knew about cosmetics, and in the days of ancient Rome perfumes were extensively used. The rich gentlemen of the time went to the great baths attended by slaves, who carried different perfume odours to be uged on different parts of the body. It was fashionable to use one perfujue on the head, another on the face, a third on the neck and so on. At one time the sale of perfume was prohibited because so much was being used that there was an anticipated shortage of perfume for religious services. With the dark ages of learning, the knowledge of the application of cosmetics was restricted. Princes, popes and potentates had their private laboratories and their privy chemists, but on the whole there was little if any progress in the lield of cosmetics. Natural ilower perfumes were developed in France, and even to-day the southern part of France is the flower garden for perfumes. The industry of cosmetics has advanced by leaps and bounds. Each year finds • new- outlets for the cosmetic | laboratory.