Small bottles worn around the waists of Stone Age Europeans over 6,000 years ago may have been the first makeup bags, according to new research. If the contents were indeed the equivalent of prehistoric Maybelline, that would mean makeup was in use in Europe more than 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. The discovery also places makeup use in the West hundreds of years before the earliest evidence of cosmetics in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The vessel was located at a site occupied in 4350 BC by the Lasinja, a prehistoric people descended from hunter-gatherers in Western Europe. The use of lead in central and southeast Europe dates to about 6,400 years ago, the same time frame as the portable jar.

Source: Daily Mail July 12, 2021 15:45 UTC