World’s oldest eyeliner discovered in Türkiye

An 8,200-year-old stone pencil used for eyeliner was found at the Yesilova Mound in Izmir, on the Aegean coast of Turkey. It is the oldest eyeliner ever found.

The stone is 9.5 centimeters (3.7 inches) long and tapers to a point. There are remnants of black paint on the tip. The women dipped them into jars of black paint and applied the thin end to their eyelids. Similar stones with painted tips have been found before in Syria, Iran and Turkey, but the oldest date back 4,000 years.

Analysis of the chemical composition of the pencil pigments revealed that the pigments contained manganese oxide, which is a component of the kohl used by women from prehistoric times to the present day for the eyes and eyebrows. Kohl formulas are surprisingly diverse. Studies of Egyptian cosmetics have found kohl formulas based on lead, carbon and silicon, as well as manganese.

The manganese oxide in eyeshadow comes from manganese oxide, a dark grey or black mineral that Neanderthals used as fire starters 60,000 years ago and early modern humans used in cave art during the Upper Paleolithic. The world’s oldest lip gloss (dating back to the 3rd millennium BC) was discovered in southern Iran in 2001 and used hematite (iron oxide) as a red base, darkened with manganese oxide.

Excavations at Yeshilova Mound have been ongoing since 2005, revealing the earliest Neolithic habitation layers dating back about 8,500 years. This means that the eyeline existed almost from the earliest days of the settlement.