Ancient Egyptian men tried everything to stop hair loss, from swallowing a mixture of onions, iron, red lead, honey, and alabaster after reciting a spell to the sun god, to rubbing lion fat directly onto their scalps. None of it worked. By around 1500 BC, these remedies were already part of a long tradition of failed attempts that continued for centuries, eventually giving way to a more practical solution: wigs. The biology behind why humans lose hair has only recently been understood.
Male pattern baldness, formally known as androgenetic alopecia, is driven by dihydrotestosterone, a byproduct created when testosterone is converted by an enzyme in the oil glands of hair follicles. In genetically sensitive follicles, this hormone shortens the active growth phase, slowly miniaturizing hairs until they become fine and nearly invisible. The classic horseshoe pattern emerges because the top and front of the scalp carry more androgen receptors than the sides and back, making those areas more vulnerable. The condition is strongly heritable.
A 2018 study published in Nature Communications identified more than 600 genomic locations associated with the trait, including a significant cluster on the X chromosome inherited from the mother. This gives real genetic backing to the old folk wisdom that baldness comes from the mother’s side of the family. Research analyzing over 205,000 men estimated that roughly 62% of the variation in male pattern baldness can be traced to genetics. Many of the genetic variants associated with baldness predate modern humans and appear across multiple populations.
However, their frequency varies dramatically by ancestry, appearing considerably more often in European populations and less often in East Asian populations. According to Charles Ryan, author of “The Virility Paradox,” researchers can trace specific genetic markers to populations descended from groups that migrated into Europe or the Middle East out of Africa roughly 40,000 years ago. This suggests the specific common form of male pattern baldness may have emerged after that migration. Evidence of whether early Paleolithic humans visibly lost hair is largely unknowable.
Male pattern baldness typically becomes noticeable between ages 25 and 50, but early humans often died in their 20s from infections, trauma, or failed hunts. As Ryan bluntly noted, they didn’t live to the ripe old age of 45. The genetic machinery may have been present for tens of thousands of years before enough men survived long enough to show it. Humans are not alone in losing hair, but the comparisons are imperfect.
Chimpanzees can experience significant hairlessness, but the pattern does not match human male pattern baldness, suggesting parallel evolution through separate pathways. Macaques also lose hair, but their baldness appears linked to stress-related pulling behavior and affects both sexes equally. Gorillas and orangutans generally do not experience comparable scalp hair loss at all. Evolution has apparently allowed baldness to persist because it is linked to other traits through a concept called pleiotropy.
The same genetic machinery responsible for hair thinning is tied to earlier puberty onset, increased bone mineral density, and certain metabolic functions. If those traits carried a reproductive advantage, the baldness-associated genes would keep circulating even though hair loss itself offers no direct benefit. Additionally, baldness usually appears after prime reproductive years, so natural selection has little opportunity to weed it out. The archaeological record provides the firmest evidence of early baldness from ancient Egyptian tombs.
In 2019, Egyptology Professor Salima Ikram documented 122 bald men painted across private tombs dating from roughly 2613 to 525 BC. Most appeared visibly aged with white hair remaining on the sides, matching the natural progression of androgenetic hair loss rather than shaving or medical conditions. These men were depicted prominently in everyday roles, suggesting baldness was treated as an unremarkable part of aging. Ancient Egyptians even developed a sophisticated cultural framework around the condition, including dedicated terminology for different stages, a designated line in mummification practices, and recognition of distinct balding hairstyles as legitimate choices.
This acceptance coexisted alongside a parallel obsession with finding cures, demonstrating that a society can treat something as completely normal publicly while privately spending considerable effort to reverse it. The attempted cures stretched across civilizations with no contact between them. Hippocrates reportedly applied a mixture of horseradish, cumin, opium, beetroot, pigeon droppings, and nettles to his own scalp. It failed, but he made a crucial observation: eunuchs never went bald.
This was the earliest recorded recognition of the hormonal link that modern endocrinology only untangled in the mid-20th century. Julius Caesar, facing his own thinning hair, adopted the laurel wreath as a partial solution and grew his remaining hair long to comb forward, creating the first documented comb over. Cleopatra reportedly recommended a remedy involving ground-up mice, horse teeth, and bear grease, which also failed. Centuries later, King Louis XIV of France, after losing his hair to illness, popularized elaborate wigs at court, some reportedly weighing up to 20 pounds and in a few extravagant cases featuring cages housing live birds.
The unbroken chain of failed remedies demonstrates that male pattern baldness was a recognized problem for at least 4,000 years of recorded history. The genetic machinery behind it appears genuinely ancient, with the specific form seen today most plausibly tracing to the migration out of Africa roughly 40,000 years ago. Whether Paleolithic humans showed visible baldness remains unknown, likely suppressed by short lifespans, but by the time of Egyptian civilization, it was common, accepted, and worth painting onto more than 100 tomb walls.
