Bright-red pigment is one of the earliest examples of Bronze Age lipstick
A bright-red pigment housed inside a small stone vial could be one of the oldest known examples of lipstick in the world. Archaeologists recovered the Bronze Age cosmetic in 2001 in Jiroft, a city in southeastern Iran, after the Halil River flooded and swept through several nearby cemeteries from the third millennium B.C., according to a study published Feb. 1 in the journal Scientific Reports . The swift water forced the vial, which is made of intricately carved chlorite, to the surface alongside numerous other artifacts, many of which were looted by locals, the researchers wrote in the study. Items that were recovered, including the lipstick , are now part of the Jiroft Archaeological Museum collection. To learn more about the ancient lip paint, the researchers analyzed the red substance using radiocarbon dating and determined that it was up to 4,000 years old and dated to sometime between 1936 B.C. and 1687 B.C. "The substance we extracted from the vial was very dark...