According to historical records, ancient Egyptians, Romans, Germans, China and Indians began to dye their hair very early.
About 4000 years ago, Egyptians dyed their hair orange with the hot water extract of Spartina. The Romans combed their hair with a lead comb soaked in vinegar and blackened it, thus covering their gray hair with lead acetate. Germans dyed their white hair black with sheep fat and plant ash juice. In Europe, walnut dyes are still used to dye hair light brown, and Huang Ju dyes are used to dye hair yellow in spring.
The historical figure who recorded hair dyeing earlier in China literature was Wang Mang more than 2,000 years ago. At the age of 68, Wang Mang made a lady named Shi the queen. At that time, he had "white hair and white beard". In order to cover up his old age, he dyed his hair and beard black. The biography of Wang Mang in Hanshu called him "trying to keep abreast of the world, but dyeing his beard and hair".
What material did Wang Mang dye his black beard and hair with? It is not recorded in Hanshu. However, referring to Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica written in the Eastern Han Dynasty, some drugs that can blacken white hair have been recorded. For example, Artemisia annua can "black hair". After the Han Dynasty, more and more hair dyes were recognized and used. In the Tang Dynasty, there are many prescriptions for dyeing black hair and beard, such as "oil stains on ebony, which are often used to apply good hair". "Black water stain, painted black"; "Wash it with salt soup and coat it with sesame oil and Puwei ash" and so on. Compendium of Materia Medica in Ming Dynasty also quoted and introduced many drugs for external use, such as barley, needle sand and black-bone chicken. Basil "can dye moustaches and make them black"; Vitex negundo and bear fat mixed with vinegar make hair black; "A piece of birch bark, wrapped in the branches of Platycladus orientalis, burned in a bowl of smoked sesame oil and rubbed on the temples by hand, is black"; Ye Lang grass "can dye hair"; Raspberry juice is not white, and so on. People also dye their hair with black bean vinegar. The method is 50 grams of black beans and 500 ml of rice vinegar. After soaking, decoct the juice with slow fire and dip it with a toothbrush once a day, which can make the white hair black.
Others, such as Sheng Ji Zong Lu in the Song Dynasty, Taiping Sheng Huifang in the Yuan Dynasty, Imperial Hospital in the Yuan Dynasty, Puji Fang in the Ming Dynasty, Effective Prescriptions for World Famous Doctors, Rejuvenation of All Diseases, and Prescriptions for Receiving and Checking in the Qing Dynasty, all have many prescriptions for dyeing black hair and beard, and the list is endless.
China ancient hair dyes can be divided into four categories according to the source of ingredients: animal hair dyes, plant hair dyes, mineral hair dyes and mixed hair dyes. But it can't solve the problem of "easy decoloration".