The oldest known depiction of hair styling is hair braiding, which dates back about 30,000 years. Women's hair was often elaborately and carefully dressed in special ways, though it was also frequently kept covered outside the home, especially for married women.
The oldest known reproduction of hair braiding may go back about 30,000 years: the Venus of Willendorf, a female figurine estimated to have been made between about 28,000 and 25,000 BC in modern-day Austria.
The oldest undisputed known fossils showing unambiguous imprints of hair are the Callovian (late middle Jurassic) Castorocauda and several contemporary haramiyidans, both near-mammal cynodonts, giving the age as no later than ≈220 ma based on the modern phylogenetic understanding of these clades.
Our early ancestors, living in the Stone Age approximately 100,000 years ago, had rudimentary tools such as sharpened stones, flint, and shells, which they used to trim and shape hair. These early grooming practices were crude and likely painful, but they marked the beginning of hair maintenance in human history.
Lack of Volume/Layers: Flat, lifeless short hair can look dull and aging. Too Short: A cut that's too short can expose your neck and accentuate wrinkles. Outdated Style: A hairstyle that's stuck in the past can make you look older than your years.
In this era, surgery was seldom conducted by physicians. Instead, barbers, who possessed razors and dexterity, were responsible for tasks ranging from cutting hair to pulling teeth to amputating limbs. In this period, surgical mortality was very high due to blood loss, shock and infection.
In the early stages of mankind, there were limited options for our ancestors. For Neanderthals and ancient humans, their choice was to cut their hair with flint, grow it in a braid, or use mud.
Several parts of the Indian population do it for religious reasons, as in the Hindu mundan ritual. The mundan is one of 16 purification rituals known as “Shodasha Samskara”. The ceremony is believed to rid the baby of any negativity from their past life while promoting mental and spiritual development.
Ancient Origins
In ancient civilisations like Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, hairstyles often signified one's social status and role in society. For example, the iconic braided wigs worn by Egyptian pharaohs and noblewomen symbolised power and sophistication.
Nature's Rarest Palette: Red Hair Standing at the apex of rarity, natural red hair occurs in just 1-2% of the global population. This striking shade results from a specific genetic variant of the MC1R gene, requiring both parents to pass on the recessive trait.
The ancient Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, c. 1550 BCE, has recipes for dyeing gray hair and eyebrows. Assyrian clay tablets dated to the 7th century BCE mention using the gall of a black ox, cypress oil, licorice, and honey to turn gray hair black.
The current world record holder for the longest hair length is Xie Qiuping from China, whose hair was measured to be 18 feet 5 inches or 5.6 meters long.
“Braids have been impressionable throughout history,” says Sims. “The origin of braids can be traced back 5000 years in African culture to 3500 BC—they were very popular among women.” “Braiding started in Africa with the Himba people of Namibia,” says Pace. “These people have been braiding their hair for centuries.
The earliest known evidence of hair is actually the presence of whiskers – functional hairs used to sense the surrounding environment – on therapsids, mammal-like reptiles which existed around 290 million years ago and are known as the ancestor of modern mammals.
In Hindu tradition, from birth, hair is associated with less positive aspects of or qualities from past lives. Thus at the time of the shave, the child is freshly shaven to signify freedom from the past and moving into the future.
Pubic or perineal shaving is a procedure performed before birth in order to lessen the risk of infection if there is a spontaneous perineal tear or if an episiotomy is performed.
In Chinese culture, it's a practice to shave baby's hair during their first or fourth month of life to shed the birth hair they received from the womb. After the shave, both mom and baby are required to take a bath with pomelo leaves to ward off evil spirits.
This suggests that humans had lost body hair (but retained head hair) and developed thick pubic hair prior to this date, were living in or close to the forest where gorillas lived, and acquired pubic lice from butchering gorillas or sleeping in their nests.
Hair styling was a way to communicate status, emotions, and beauty all across Africa. The forced removal of hair communicated that the Africans—whoever they were before they had been taken—no longer existed. Their cultures were to be stripped from them in the same way their hair had been.
The results suggest that people deliberately sought partners beyond their immediate family, and that they were probably connected to a wider network of groups from within which mates were chosen, in order to avoid becoming inbred.
Traditionally, adult Han Chinese did not cut their hair for philosophical and cultural reasons. According to the Classic of Filial Piety, Confucius said: We are given our body, skin and hair from our parents; which we ought not to damage. This idea is the quintessence of filial duty.
Conclusion. From at least the 15th century, if not earlier, barbers and barber surgeons pulled teeth and were the equivalent of today's dentists. This continued until the 18th century when barbers and surgeons formed two separate professions.
Physicians & Master Surgeons
The two most distinct groups within the medical practitioners of the medieval period were the physicians and the master surgeons. Both groups claimed higher levels of knowledge than other practitioners though only physicians had a university education.