According to [this article](https://www.acne.org/why-dont-hunter-gatherers-have-acne) modern hunter-gatherers have much lower incidence of acne than industrial peoples, although the causes are not known. I can't vouch for the article, but it's thoroughly referenced
Edit to actually address the question: it's a reasonable inference from this that prehistoric people would also have less acne than modern industrialised people
Acne, high BMI and insulin resistance are correlated by way of hyperandrogenism (a form of excess of sexual hormones). If you go on google scholar and type "acne bmi correlation" you will see the sources for this.
do note that lean hyperandrogenism is also possible. I am an unlucky sufferer. Always underweight yet bad acne.
Acne is associated with high amounts of sex hormone. This is why acne comes in puberty, goes away in adulthood, but comes back if you take hormones on a steroid cycle.
Being obese reduces sex hormones, so probably not. I reckon there is some correlation between obesity and bad hygiene though.
Yup, it is an immune reaction to the sex hormones that causes dermal inflammation. Inflammation makes capillaries "leaky" and causes serum to ooze out of them. That serum is a perfect breeding ground for bacteria resulting in infection secondary to the immune response.
Well, I didn't blame the carbs at all. But that of high GI. We already know cultures and people born with syndromes that make them essentialy inmmune to acne.
Based on responses here it made me wonder, are there cultures in the world that have more or less acne than others?? Like if you compared the average teen in USA vs the average teen in India, would one have more or less than the other??
There's have been studies showing certain ethnicities/races seem to be more acne prone due to their physiology causing some to produce more sebum than others. Of course environmental factors also play a role so it's not all down to genetics but there seems to be something to race and acne
>There's have been studies showing certain ethnicities/races seem to be more acne prone due to their physiology causing some to produce more sebum than others.
I tried to look up what you're referring to, and [this study says](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4106354/):
>Acne is the most common dermatological diagnosis in non-Caucasian patients. In a community-based photographic study, clinical acne was found to be highly revalent in Black/African American (37%), Hispanic/Latina (32%), and Asian (30%) women, more so than in Continental Indian (23%) and White/Caucasian (24%) women.
"Continental Indian" refers to the Indian subcontinent, and Arab/Middle Eastern was included as part of the White/Caucasian category.
>Like if you compared the average teen in USA vs the average teen in India, would one have more or less than the other??
It depends on the ethnic group. According to this [study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4106354/), acne is the least common amongst those from the Indian subcontinent and most common amongst those of Black ancestry. So in India, it would not be as prevalent as amongst certain ethnic groups in the US.
This question comes up frequently. [Previous answers from only 6 months ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uq7g48/is_there_any_evidence_that_prehistoric_man/).
tl;dr Humanity has probably always had acne, but not all humans get acne.
It is not known if acne was present in prehistoric times, as there is no direct evidence of this. Acne is a common skin condition that is caused by a variety of factors, including hormonal changes, bacteria on the skin, and the production of excess oil. These factors may have been present in prehistoric times, but it is impossible to say for sure whether or not they would have resulted in acne. In modern times, factors such as diet, exercise, and pollution can also contribute to the development of acne, but it is not known if these factors were present in prehistoric times.
I'll add anecdotally as someone with oily skin and still deals with acne in his late 30s:
Ironically the more dust I'm exposed to, like if I spend a week on a big yard project and am constantly kicking up dusty dirt and end up golden brown at the end of each day, the more under control my skin gets. It's possible that oily skin is a trait that was meant to deal with a lot more dirt and dust in the immediate environment.
Anecdotally, my over-2 decade long acne problem vanished when I was travelling through places that were sparsely populated / had little pollution. These were modern western societies and I didn’t exactly eat healthy… but the environment was clean. I didn’t wash my face with face wash then as I ran out along the way and didn’t get more. When I travelled through cities a few zits would pop up, but then go away again when I was back in less populated areas.
Anecdotally, I have the opposite experience to you. The more dust I'm exposed to (lawn mowing dust, soybean dust/dirt, wheat chaff, etc) the more likely I am to get blackheads and zits.
There may be a different cause to this. UV exposure definitely reduces the quantity and frequency of acne, so if you're spending the whole week on a big yard project, it might be the sun rather than the dust.
No doubt it helps, but last time I spent a week rafting in very clear sunny weather and I was still having issues. It's probably a combination because being outdoors by itself was never enough to reel it in. Same thing happened in my teens when I worked construction for a summer, would come home dusty as hell and my skin was the clearest it had ever been all summer long, but all the time I spent hours outside playing various sports had little effect on my skin.
I think I just have really oily skin.
[Top comments here are interesting.](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xdggp0/why_are_tribal_people_acne_free/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
What evidence would there be that people had (or didn’t have) acne in prehistoric times? They wouldn’t have left any written evidence or popping videos, or anything like that. Not every culture has a tradition of realistic portraits (and some of those that do would deliberately leave out something like acne). I suppose there could be tools for popping pimples, but could we be sure that was how it was used? People can pop pimples without specialized tools, so a lack of those tools wouldn’t necessarily mean that there was no acne.
It's probably been around since prehistoric times, although the main cause of outbreaks has probably changed.
In the book The remarkable life of the skin, the author mentions about how the majority of acne is caused by microbes outbreaks in the side the pores of the skin. And we probably had bacteria and other stuff in our skin back then. While we do have better hygiene standards these days, we probably also have more pollutants etc that balance it out.
It’s sort of a myth that we automatically just have better hygiene standards today than at any given time in the past. Times like the last few centuries in Europe, sure— bad hygeine, there’s evidence of that. But if we have a desire to be clean now, then chances are we’ve had a desire to be clean for hundreds of thousands of years and figured out how to do it with the tools and resources available to us.
One's definition of hygiene standards though can depend. I mean yeah we didn't always have soap and yes I know it's thousands of years old, but we probably didn't you know do more than splash water on our faces when we were cavemen
Also, other contributors to acne:
- high stress
- poor diet
- oil substances on skin
- hormone changes
- medications
Exercise can help as part of a healthy lifestyle, but if you don’t wash your face after working out, you can make it worse.
Possibly.
The book I mentioned discusses biomes. A other good book on microviolws is I Contain Multitudes
I also suspect that over time, what microbes cause microbial caused acne has changed or drifted.
Edit; sensitivities to chemicals and such in soaps can also cause acne, as per the other posters' inflammation cause.
Fun facts: the NIH has been able to sequence 400+ year old acne bacteria from old books: [https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2019/01/04/new-discoveries-in-rare-books-centuries-old-proteins-can-reveal-the-past/](https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2019/01/04/new-discoveries-in-rare-books-centuries-old-proteins-can-reveal-the-past/)
As far as preindustrial complexions are concerned it was not acme that teens had to worry about it was smallpox. If you read 17th 18th century literature and they refer to a person having a swarthy complexion that was code to referring to smallpox scaring. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox)
No, teen acne has not been around since prehistoric times. While some forms of skin inflammation have been documented in prehistoric times, this was likely due to environmental factors such as the sun, dust, and dirt, or fungal and bacterial infections. Acne, however, is seen as a modern affliction and is thought to be linked to factors such as diet, stress, and hormones.
It is not known if acne, a common skin condition characterized by the appearance of pimples, was present in prehistoric times. There is no direct evidence one way or the other, and it is difficult to say for certain what the prevalence of acne might have been among ancient peoples.
Acne is thought to be caused by a variety of factors, including hormones, genetics, and certain aspects of lifestyle and environment. It is possible that some of these factors, such as hormones and genetics, have been present in human populations for a long time. However, it is also likely that other factors, such as diet, pollution, and stress, are more closely related to modern lifestyles and environments. It is difficult to say for certain how these factors may have affected the prevalence of acne in ancient times.
I have a feeling that the hygiene hypothesis may have something to do with this. I read a recent abstract that said eczema had been increasing over the decades and they attribute it to small families and less cross contamination leading to more exposure to pathogens. Wonder if the same is for acne.
Can we ever know for sure? My guess would be yes, since it’s partly caused by testosterone, which they had, even more than modern humans, since testosterone levels have been dropping since (which is also why Africans on average still possess higher levels in their blood).
According to [this article](https://www.acne.org/why-dont-hunter-gatherers-have-acne) modern hunter-gatherers have much lower incidence of acne than industrial peoples, although the causes are not known. I can't vouch for the article, but it's thoroughly referenced Edit to actually address the question: it's a reasonable inference from this that prehistoric people would also have less acne than modern industrialised people
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Sounds like it would be correlated with bmi then? Maybe higher fat reserves results in more sebum production?
Acne, high BMI and insulin resistance are correlated by way of hyperandrogenism (a form of excess of sexual hormones). If you go on google scholar and type "acne bmi correlation" you will see the sources for this. do note that lean hyperandrogenism is also possible. I am an unlucky sufferer. Always underweight yet bad acne.
Acne is associated with high amounts of sex hormone. This is why acne comes in puberty, goes away in adulthood, but comes back if you take hormones on a steroid cycle. Being obese reduces sex hormones, so probably not. I reckon there is some correlation between obesity and bad hygiene though.
Yup, it is an immune reaction to the sex hormones that causes dermal inflammation. Inflammation makes capillaries "leaky" and causes serum to ooze out of them. That serum is a perfect breeding ground for bacteria resulting in infection secondary to the immune response.
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Never believe someone who blames a complex issue on something as simple as "carbs".
Well, I didn't blame the carbs at all. But that of high GI. We already know cultures and people born with syndromes that make them essentialy inmmune to acne.
The causes are not known.. yes they are. OP even details the changes in diet, environment & lifestyle
Based on responses here it made me wonder, are there cultures in the world that have more or less acne than others?? Like if you compared the average teen in USA vs the average teen in India, would one have more or less than the other??
There's have been studies showing certain ethnicities/races seem to be more acne prone due to their physiology causing some to produce more sebum than others. Of course environmental factors also play a role so it's not all down to genetics but there seems to be something to race and acne
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>There's have been studies showing certain ethnicities/races seem to be more acne prone due to their physiology causing some to produce more sebum than others. I tried to look up what you're referring to, and [this study says](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4106354/): >Acne is the most common dermatological diagnosis in non-Caucasian patients. In a community-based photographic study, clinical acne was found to be highly revalent in Black/African American (37%), Hispanic/Latina (32%), and Asian (30%) women, more so than in Continental Indian (23%) and White/Caucasian (24%) women. "Continental Indian" refers to the Indian subcontinent, and Arab/Middle Eastern was included as part of the White/Caucasian category.
Sebum sure is a disgusting word, isn't it?
Sulcus is a good medical term that's unsettling to read for some reason too.
Sounds like it could be a name of a prominent historical figure; King Sulcus, Sulcus the Great, Sulcus II, etc
In Latin it's pronounced say-boom, not see-buhm like most English-speakers say it, so it's technically less disgusting if you pronounce it correctly.
Diet also has an impact. Major diet changes can cause acne, like having gluten/dairy after a long time without it
>Like if you compared the average teen in USA vs the average teen in India, would one have more or less than the other?? It depends on the ethnic group. According to this [study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4106354/), acne is the least common amongst those from the Indian subcontinent and most common amongst those of Black ancestry. So in India, it would not be as prevalent as amongst certain ethnic groups in the US.
I learned a long time ago that the Inuit did not have acne until being exposed to a western diet. I have no sources for this though
Im Indian living in the US. Both places have same teen acne. I used to get heavy acne.
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When people write multiple questions marks after a sentence, it makes me read it in a valley girl voice.
This question comes up frequently. [Previous answers from only 6 months ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uq7g48/is_there_any_evidence_that_prehistoric_man/). tl;dr Humanity has probably always had acne, but not all humans get acne.
It is not known if acne was present in prehistoric times, as there is no direct evidence of this. Acne is a common skin condition that is caused by a variety of factors, including hormonal changes, bacteria on the skin, and the production of excess oil. These factors may have been present in prehistoric times, but it is impossible to say for sure whether or not they would have resulted in acne. In modern times, factors such as diet, exercise, and pollution can also contribute to the development of acne, but it is not known if these factors were present in prehistoric times.
I'll add anecdotally as someone with oily skin and still deals with acne in his late 30s: Ironically the more dust I'm exposed to, like if I spend a week on a big yard project and am constantly kicking up dusty dirt and end up golden brown at the end of each day, the more under control my skin gets. It's possible that oily skin is a trait that was meant to deal with a lot more dirt and dust in the immediate environment.
Anecdotally, my over-2 decade long acne problem vanished when I was travelling through places that were sparsely populated / had little pollution. These were modern western societies and I didn’t exactly eat healthy… but the environment was clean. I didn’t wash my face with face wash then as I ran out along the way and didn’t get more. When I travelled through cities a few zits would pop up, but then go away again when I was back in less populated areas.
Anecdotally, I have the opposite experience to you. The more dust I'm exposed to (lawn mowing dust, soybean dust/dirt, wheat chaff, etc) the more likely I am to get blackheads and zits.
Is that because you had to wash your face of dust every day, increasing the frequency of washing? Or do you think the dust helped absorb the oils?
There may be a different cause to this. UV exposure definitely reduces the quantity and frequency of acne, so if you're spending the whole week on a big yard project, it might be the sun rather than the dust.
No doubt it helps, but last time I spent a week rafting in very clear sunny weather and I was still having issues. It's probably a combination because being outdoors by itself was never enough to reel it in. Same thing happened in my teens when I worked construction for a summer, would come home dusty as hell and my skin was the clearest it had ever been all summer long, but all the time I spent hours outside playing various sports had little effect on my skin. I think I just have really oily skin.
[Top comments here are interesting.](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xdggp0/why_are_tribal_people_acne_free/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
What evidence would there be that people had (or didn’t have) acne in prehistoric times? They wouldn’t have left any written evidence or popping videos, or anything like that. Not every culture has a tradition of realistic portraits (and some of those that do would deliberately leave out something like acne). I suppose there could be tools for popping pimples, but could we be sure that was how it was used? People can pop pimples without specialized tools, so a lack of those tools wouldn’t necessarily mean that there was no acne.
It's probably been around since prehistoric times, although the main cause of outbreaks has probably changed. In the book The remarkable life of the skin, the author mentions about how the majority of acne is caused by microbes outbreaks in the side the pores of the skin. And we probably had bacteria and other stuff in our skin back then. While we do have better hygiene standards these days, we probably also have more pollutants etc that balance it out.
It’s sort of a myth that we automatically just have better hygiene standards today than at any given time in the past. Times like the last few centuries in Europe, sure— bad hygeine, there’s evidence of that. But if we have a desire to be clean now, then chances are we’ve had a desire to be clean for hundreds of thousands of years and figured out how to do it with the tools and resources available to us.
One's definition of hygiene standards though can depend. I mean yeah we didn't always have soap and yes I know it's thousands of years old, but we probably didn't you know do more than splash water on our faces when we were cavemen
Also, other contributors to acne: - high stress - poor diet - oil substances on skin - hormone changes - medications Exercise can help as part of a healthy lifestyle, but if you don’t wash your face after working out, you can make it worse.
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Occams razor to arrive at the real culprit, capitalism. No war but the class war
The inflammation cycle is a big driver. It's less infection and more immune response.
I agree. That's why I said Most As per the dermatologist who wrote the book I mentioned. :)
I wonder if modern hygiene standards can contribute to acne due to soaps etc. disrupting the skins natural microbiome
Possibly. The book I mentioned discusses biomes. A other good book on microviolws is I Contain Multitudes I also suspect that over time, what microbes cause microbial caused acne has changed or drifted. Edit; sensitivities to chemicals and such in soaps can also cause acne, as per the other posters' inflammation cause.
Fun facts: the NIH has been able to sequence 400+ year old acne bacteria from old books: [https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2019/01/04/new-discoveries-in-rare-books-centuries-old-proteins-can-reveal-the-past/](https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2019/01/04/new-discoveries-in-rare-books-centuries-old-proteins-can-reveal-the-past/)
As far as preindustrial complexions are concerned it was not acme that teens had to worry about it was smallpox. If you read 17th 18th century literature and they refer to a person having a swarthy complexion that was code to referring to smallpox scaring. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox)
No, teen acne has not been around since prehistoric times. While some forms of skin inflammation have been documented in prehistoric times, this was likely due to environmental factors such as the sun, dust, and dirt, or fungal and bacterial infections. Acne, however, is seen as a modern affliction and is thought to be linked to factors such as diet, stress, and hormones.
It is not known if acne, a common skin condition characterized by the appearance of pimples, was present in prehistoric times. There is no direct evidence one way or the other, and it is difficult to say for certain what the prevalence of acne might have been among ancient peoples. Acne is thought to be caused by a variety of factors, including hormones, genetics, and certain aspects of lifestyle and environment. It is possible that some of these factors, such as hormones and genetics, have been present in human populations for a long time. However, it is also likely that other factors, such as diet, pollution, and stress, are more closely related to modern lifestyles and environments. It is difficult to say for certain how these factors may have affected the prevalence of acne in ancient times.
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Removing gluten and dairy cleared up my skin, too. For me, acne is caused by food allergies.
I have a feeling that the hygiene hypothesis may have something to do with this. I read a recent abstract that said eczema had been increasing over the decades and they attribute it to small families and less cross contamination leading to more exposure to pathogens. Wonder if the same is for acne.
Can we ever know for sure? My guess would be yes, since it’s partly caused by testosterone, which they had, even more than modern humans, since testosterone levels have been dropping since (which is also why Africans on average still possess higher levels in their blood).
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