One of the things I love about tallow is that it does not need a marketing story. The history is real. People have been using rendered animal fat on their skin for thousands of years, across dozens of cultures, on every inhabited continent. Understanding that history does two things. It gives you confidence that this is not some fringe idea, and it helps explain why the shift away from tallow in the 20th century was driven by economics and manufacturing convenience rather than evidence that anything better had come along.

Ancient Origins

The earliest documented use of animal fat in skincare comes from ancient Egypt. Papyri dating back to around 1500 BCE describe preparations that use animal fats as base ingredients, carriers for more active botanical components, the same fundamental role that oils and balms play today. Egyptian cosmetic practices were sophisticated and intentional. Fat was not used out of desperation. It was recognized as effective.

In ancient Rome and Greece, fat-based preparations were central to personal care. Roman gladiators used a tool called a strigil to scrape a mixture of oil, sweat, and dirt from their skin after exercise, and the oils they used before training often came from animal sources. The association between fat and strength, protection, and vitality ran through their culture from athletics to daily hygiene.

Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Throughout medieval Europe, rendered animal fats were standard ingredients in salves, ointments, and poultices. Lard and tallow were the primary bases for what we would now call topical medicines. Cold cream, one of the first named cosmetic preparations with a long documented history, was formulated with wax, water, and animal fats. The Roman physician Galen is credited with an early version. Cold cream remained a staple of women's skincare through the 18th and 19th centuries, with tallow as a common ingredient in many formulas.

The Industrial Shift

The 20th century changed everything. The rise of petrochemical industry and synthetic chemistry made mineral oil and engineered emollients extremely cheap to produce at scale. Animal fats were seen as old-fashioned, inconsistent, and difficult to work with in mass manufacturing. The skincare industry moved on, not because synthetic alternatives worked better for skin, but because they worked better for factories and profit margins.

Mineral oil, which became a dominant moisturizing ingredient, is an occlusive that does very little beyond sitting on the skin's surface. Compare that to the fatty acids in tallow that actually integrate with skin chemistry. The shift was not an upgrade. It was a trade of biological compatibility for industrial convenience.

The Revival

The renewed interest in tallow skincare is part of a broader cultural shift back toward ancestral and traditional approaches to health, eating real food, spending time outdoors, simplifying. When I started Erda about two years ago, this was exactly the conversation I wanted to be part of. Not as a nostalgia project, but because the biology actually makes sense and the results back it up. The ancestral practice and the modern science tell the same story. Tallow works because it is compatible with human skin, and that was true in ancient Egypt just as it is true today.