A Brief History of Beauty

 

A Brief History of Beauty

We humans have been alive for a very long time. We have existed in our current form for around 300,000 years (excluding periods when we were known as Erectus, Australopithecus, and so on). So, yeah, 300,000 years as Homo sapiens. And some 160,000 years as Homo sapiens sapiens (I'm struggling to resist a wisecrack right now). And, last time I looked, that was the definition of a long, long time.

But, joking aside, we have always enjoyed beauty. We reveled in it. We fell in love with it. And we've cursed it too. We have always had some form of relationship with beauty. Sometimes human, sometimes natural, artistic, and sometimes lyrical. But we've always been involved in some way. Whether it's the cave paintings of southern France, the architectural prowess of the Hoysala Empire, or Helen of Troy,. It influenced our imaginations. It has shaped our lives at times. But how? And, more significantly, how has it influenced our psychology? How has it influenced the way we live now?

Why do we see beauty?

To understand how it has influenced the way we think, we may first need to understand why we see beauty. Perhaps I have asked this question many times before, both in my books and here, but let me summarize. Simply put, beauty helps us survive. It helps us distinguish ripe fruit from rotten fruit. It helps us choose which plains to live on or which mountaintops to treacherous. It guides us to the healthiest partners. It helps us to make healthier choices and to live healthier lives. What nature has engineered to help us survive is often perceived as beautiful. 

But that's just the physical side. The psychological side is different. Wherever the physical side recognizes its own limitations and decides to respect them, the mental side always tries to break through what it sees as spider-web-like limitations. It's annoying, but it's easy to tear. No. After all, these are not spiderwebs. These are meshes made of steel. But our minds refuse to recognize this. So when we see a big mountain, we feel awe and majesty, and we want to conquer it (don't you agree?). Try telling that to the people waiting in line to reach the top of Everest. It's a useful feature; without it, we'd remain stuck in habit. There is no difference between us and a monkey who gets up in the morning, gathers what is good, eats it, goes home, and does the same thing over and over again. When we feel this sense of awe, when we sense that something is bigger and more beautiful than us, it awakens in us the desire to become bigger and more beautiful ourselves. It helps us go beyond our limitations. It helps us develop further. And then the desire to possess it is born. To possess it. Perhaps the logic is that possessions make us greater and more powerful than the things that have great power over us.

This is probably why we see and recognize beauty on both a subconscious (genetic) and conscious (psychological) level. That is why we love to create, whether we use ourselves as a canvas or something else (isn't creating also a form of conquest?). Let's start from the beginning. In the beginning, women and men decided not to just look at beauty but to create it. Then, perhaps, we can go beyond our genetic limitations and understand how it has influenced us.

Let's start with the first prehistoric humans.

Acient Man and Beauty Picture this scene. 

Prehistoric Earth. Early Stone Age. About 1.76 million years ago. Early humans held stones in their hands. An idea arises in his mind that if he sharpens this stone, it will help him in hunting. So he/she starts sharpening the blade of this stone. As he/she works, a certain enthusiasm takes over. The stone is sharp. It doesn't matter. But he/she now feels the  n

need to go beyond useful. When he finds an unnecessary jagged edge, he/she quickly chips it away. When he holds her, he/she feels like something is missing. He/she silently takes another sharp stone and begins to diligently chip away at the base of this stone spear. Suddenly, being functional is no longer enough. It has to look good. He/she wants to be proud of his/her creation. After a few minutes, he/she lifts his/her head and gazes from afar at the base of the stone spear. A little bison. He/she runs off. It's not perfect. It's probably not perfectly proportional. The technology will probably get more refined over time. But it's good enough. It's good enough to get you started. For this man. And for humanity. And for the first time (maybe), we realize the need to emulate human beauty. This man never met the first man to land on the moon. But if they had met, maybe they would both have understood what he meant when he said, "That's one small step for me, one giant leap for mankind." That must have been just the beginning. And it wouldn't have been limited to one person. This wasn't the moon. This was Earth. This was a relatively crowded place. There must have been many people who felt the same way. All at the same time. Everyone had discovered the same thing. But they might not have realized. Maybe they hadn't realized that they had discovered it. For them, it must have been something they really wanted to do. For example, take your child to the beach. Put them in the sand. They will inevitably doodle in the sand. Or they can build a sand castle. Do children realize that throughout their lives they have never found joy in creating something they find beautiful? They are completely absorbed. 

Also, notice the phrase "something they find beautiful" used above. In the realm of psychological beauty, beauty is subjective. As far as genetics is concerned, beauty is objective. The average hip-to-waist ratio that we find beautiful varies from culture to culture, but the differences are tiny. But in our minds, even the most asymmetrical Picasso possible feels beautiful. 

But how do we know if that's actually what happened? The short answer is, we can't. We often measure history by pottery, jewelry, and weapons. These are usually made of stone, mud, and metal and therefore last the longest. But cultural references are lost over time. Not everyone expressed a desire to create beauty in the form of weapons, pottery, or jewelry. Some may have chosen cave walls. Some would have chosen their own minds. And others would have chosen their own bodies. The use of jewelry indicates exactly this. And here the archaeological evidence gets lost. At the moment we can only infer their thoughts from our own rather than excavating the thoughts of our prehistoric ancestors. But even if that is true, we should look within ourselves and use it as a basis for understanding our prehistoric kin. What other choice do we have? Jewelry is worn to enhance the beauty of the body, but it does not make the body beautiful. You can have the most beautiful Swarovski pendant, but if your goal is physical beauty, this Swarovski pendant will fail miserably. Because it can only improve what already exists. It cannot create anything. And our prehistoric relatives would have realized this. They were, no doubt, clever and intelligent people. Their hard lives ensured this evolutionary trait. Maybe they were smarter than us today (personally, I feel that the comfortable lives that many of us lead today have dulled our intelligence and attention span as a species, but that aside), or maybe I'm simply looking at the story through rose-tinted glasses. 

So how could they have better improved their bodies? This evidence usually doesn't survive in modern times, as the products used were perishable. Imagine mixing charcoal with butter to make kajal. Or apply crushed safflower leaves to your cheeks and lips. Or how about turmeric for skin rejuvenation? Or a mix of frankincense and moringa to prevent wrinkles? How do these things remain evidence for years? Aren't they just gone (so to speak) the moment you apply them? 

So here's the first piece of evidence: 1.

FIRST MAKEUP

Like almost everything in archaeology, for a long time, it was thought that the oldest evidence that humans wore makeup came from Egyptian civilization. And for a long time that was true. These were actually the first pieces of evidence we had. In Egypt, from predynastic times, little pottery vessels were lying around, buried in the dust, left there. And early Egyptologists, engrossed in these dusty deserts, found them right away. These were beautiful little containers, called "cosmetic palettes" by their enthusiastic finders. These palettes also had built-in little grinders, which convinced them that the cosmetics were stored in a solid form, like a rock. 

But if we look only at the chronological history of makeup rather than the qualitative history, we run into problems. We tend to see Egypt as the leader in most things, simply because we have more information from the region. Egyptologists were among the first archaeologists in history. Egypt has been undergoing archaeological excavations for over a century; most other places haven't had this advantage at all. 

So it wasn't all that surprising when a team of researchers recently announced that they'd found what are possibly the oldest cosmetic containers in Slovenia (though we still don't know if they're really the oldest). They were little cork-stoppered bottles, probably containing some old Maybelline, with beeswax, animal fat, and lead, and probably tied around the waist—kind of like an antique version of a makeup artist's belt bag. We've all seen this before, right? 

But what else was in the first cosmetics? Well, we don't know exactly what the first makeup consisted of. There probably weren't any traces left behind. But since we started using specialized containers to store them, we've been able to use the traces left on the containers to determine the ingredients a little more accurately. We know that Slovenians used beeswax (still very good for the skin), animal fats, and products containing lead (not lead!). We Indians have mostly used charcoal and butter to make kajal, while Egyptians used lead, copper, ash, and roasted almonds (not sure how good this is for skin). (It would be a good idea to research this thoroughly before trying this recipe.) The lead in this recipe was probably a very good antibacterial agent that prevented the product from deteriorating, but in the long run, it could have been harmful to the bacteria as well as to the user. Cleopatra apparently soaked her skin in donkey's milk and used ground carmine beetle as lipstick. The ancient Greeks and Romans used ground powders of various stones and minerals.  But all this only happened (in Europe)  until the Church banned makeup.

What was used in India back then? You should know, right? We wrote a paper on Shringara. While most of the world has a complex approach to the art of external self-adornment (i.e., the art of makeup), India, or Indian literature, has maintained a fairly consistent view on makeup: it is a rite of passage. Young girls and boys like to dress up. That's it. That was the idea of beauty in India throughout most of written history. The whole process of getting dressed was romanticized and ritualized, something that probably wasn't practiced in most parts of the world. We created what was popularised in Bollywood as 'Solar Shringar' (16 types of jewelry worn by women). For a bride, beautification is a ritual. In Sanskrit literature, how many writers have we come across who wax poetic about the attire of their protagonists?

FIRST CODIFICATION OF BEAUTY

But since when do we codify it? Well, that depends, first of all, on what we mean by codification. Codification has two aspects: 

1. A simple anthropological representation of how to do things  
2. Instructions that explain how to ideally do things. To put it more simply, imagine you travel back in time to ancient China and happen to have your smartphone in your hand. 

You see women performing the traditional (but gruesome) practice of foot binding. They are fascinated. So you decide to record the whole thing on your phone. This is an anthropological representation of how things are done there. Just watching and recording. No comments. No judgements. No conclusions.
But imagine going back in the 21st century and thinking about what you saw. And you come to the conclusion that it's a really great practice and should be preserved. So you start writing on your blog about how to bandage your feet like that. Not only that, but you start actively promoting it! You praise its healing powers and its aesthetic beauty. Everyone should do it, you say, and you do your best to spread that message everywhere. Now, next, you create a guide on how to go about things. 

So while I briefly (and this is an article, not a book, so briefly) try to find an initial codification of beauty, we will judge it by these criteria. And here comes the problem (or maybe it does, depending on how you look at it). Actually, the Kama Sutra (written by Vatsyayana in the 2nd century BCE) contains detailed information on the world of beauty products and cosmetics," as one research paper puts it. He even suggested some yoga asanas that enhance the beauty of the body parts," as the same research paper states. Thus, we have already moved from superficial makeup application to fitness. Going back even further, the Sushruta Samhita (a famous book on Ayurvedic medicine written by Sushruta in the 6th century BCE yes, he is the one who performed the first rhinoplasty in the world) contains an entire chapter on cosmetology. When a medical textbook deals with something clinically, you know it's serious. It covers makeup and fitness, but also plastic surgery. Now this sounds very familiar to me. But let's see if we can go back even further. 

Let's look at the Ramayana. In the Ramayana, during the stay of Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita at the monastery of Sage Atri, Sage's wife Anasuya seems to teach Sita what is called "angaragas.". Anga means body, and raga means attachment or attraction. Angaragas refers to anything that makes the body attractive, or what we prefer to call today the art of beautification or cosmetology. She even calls it "Divya varam," or divine blessing. This seems quite a change from the attitude of the pre-medieval European church or even from that of  Queen Victoria, who famously condemned any act of self-beautification as immoral. To close the casket, let us turn to the Rigveda, which describes (descriptively rather than prescriptively) various hairstyles for women  (the hairstyles are apparently called sutura, krill, kumbha, opasa and kupaldbeautiful names, but never mind the looks!) I believe this is the end of recorded history as we know it. Well, not really, because if you dig deep into the subject, you'll find a thousand pages worth of material. I know this last bit is heavily focused on Indian literature. But we're approaching 3000 words, and I don't think I have the patience to read any more in one go. So I'll leave the rest of the world for another post. We can call this "the codification of beauty in antiquity." And you'll notice it soon. 

But now it's time to draw conclusions. I've only looked at very limited material here, but not only has the codification of beauty been around since we could write and remember coherent sentences (writing came later), but beautification itself is part of our very nature. If it wasn't, we wouldn't spend so much time on it. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be moved by it. Putting on lipstick before going out seems like a very frivolous thing. But that's not what the art of beautification is all about. The art of beautification goes deeper. It refers to your true self. How do you beautify yourself? Every layer of yourself? And yes, we usually understand that to mean things like developing character or becoming a better person (whatever that means), and that's totally valid. These are absolutely essential elements to the beauty of what you call yourself. But your body is also a part of you. He is actually more tangible than you. You can pick it up, hold it, experiment with it, and feel the results with your five senses. It is the most solid part of you. You could argue that if you don t have a body, you're not a human being. And if you go down this path, if you don t have a body,  there is a huge chance that you will not exist, right? Why then, do you want to discount such an integral part of that which forms you?

And some of those questions are just too important to ignore.