The Ancient World's Beauty Secrets: The Ancestral Ingredients Behind Edenwild
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By Angela Clifton, Founder of Edenwild
Jump to: Frankincense · Bakuchiol · Tallow · Jojoba · Calendula, Chamomile & Marshmallow Root · Helichrysum · Sea Buckthorn · Aloe Vera · Honey · Rosehip Seed Oil · French Green Clay · Who This Is For · FAQs
Quick answer: None of the ingredients in this article were invented by a lab. They were discovered by people paying close attention to what worked, passed down for generations, and — in a lot of cases — only explained by modern research decades or centuries later. Edenwild formulates with several of these ancestral ingredients today. Here's where they come from, how they were traditionally used, and why they've earned their place in a jar for this long.
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Ancestral Formulas, Made for Modern Families
Every Edenwild formula starts with a question: would we put this on our daughters' skin? If the answer is no, it doesn't make the cut. Formulated near Yellowstone.
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Frankincense Resin
Frankincense was valuable enough in the ancient world that entire trade routes formed around it — caravans crossing the Arabian desert, ships moving it through Red Sea ports, Egypt and the wider Mediterranean all reaching for the same resin. At points in antiquity it was worth roughly its weight in gold. That's not incense-shop nostalgia. That's an ingredient people organized economies, taxation, and trade alliances around.
The resin comes from the Boswellia tree, harvested by cutting the bark and letting the sap weep out and harden — a process that hasn't changed much in thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians used it in embalming and skincare preparations alike. It shows up in religious texts across multiple traditions, burned in temples and used topically in equal measure — the line between the sacred and the cosmetic wasn't nearly as sharp as it is today.
Here's the distinction most modern brands skip: frankincense essential oil, made through steam distillation, is wonderful for aromatherapy — but that process largely leaves the boswellic acids behind, the compounds unique to the whole resin. So the choice isn't "resin is right, essential oil is wrong" — it's about what you're formulating for. Edenwild uses frankincense essential oil for its aromatic properties, and reaches for frankincense resin oil specifically when boswellic acid content matters to the formula. Read more about why the form of frankincense matters. You'll find it in Golden Root Balm, Alpenglow Serum, Nectar Serum.
Bakuchiol
Bakuchiol comes from the seeds and leaves of Psoralea corylifolia — babchi, in the Ayurvedic tradition it comes from, where it's been part of herbal practice for centuries. It also appears in traditional Chinese medicine, valued for generations before Western dermatology identified the specific compound responsible for its effects on skin.
Nobody in either tradition had a molecular explanation for why it worked. They just knew it did, through direct observation passed down over generations — the same way most traditional medicine accumulates its knowledge, long before anyone had the tools to isolate an active compound and study it in a lab.
That's usually how these ingredients go: tradition gets there first, and science shows up later to explain the mechanism. Bakuchiol's had that moment more recently than most of the ingredients on this list, which is part of why it's had such a fast rise in modern skincare over the past several years — it's a rare case where an ancient ingredient became a headline story almost overnight, once modern research caught up to what traditional use had already established. See how bakuchiol compares to retinol. Edenwild uses CO2-extracted bakuchiol in Nectar Face Serum, alongside stable vitamin C and frankincense resin oil.
Tallow
Rendered animal fat predates petroleum-based moisturizer by, well, most of human history. Long before anyone was refining crude oil into cosmetic ingredients, cultures on nearly every inhabited continent were rendering fat and using it on skin — European, Native American, and various African and Asian traditions all developed their own version of this practice, independently, with no contact between them.
That's the detail worth sitting with. When completely unrelated groups of people, separated by oceans and centuries, land on the same solution without ever comparing notes, that's usually not coincidence — it's evidence that something about the solution genuinely works, discovered again and again through direct trial and observation rather than shared knowledge.
The reason is fairly straightforward: tallow is compositionally close to what your own skin already produces. Your skin doesn't have to figure out what to do with it the way it might with something entirely foreign to its own chemistry — it already recognizes the fat profile. Learn more about what makes grass-fed tallow different. Edenwild's balms are built on grass-fed and finished tallow from suet, with botanicals slow-infused into jojoba oil and blended in. Golden Root, Morning Dew, and Everything Balm all use this base.
Jojoba
Small correction before we go further: jojoba isn't technically an oil. It's a liquid wax ester — a distinction that matters more than it sounds like it should. Indigenous peoples of the Sonoran Desert, where the jojoba plant is native, used it for generations on skin and hair, harvesting the seeds and pressing out the wax long before "wax ester" was a phrase anyone used in a skincare context.
What makes jojoba unusual is how closely its structure mirrors human sebum — the oil your own skin naturally produces. That similarity is exactly why it absorbs the way it does instead of sitting on top of skin the way a heavier plant oil might. It's also the reason almost every Edenwild formula starts here. Jojoba is the base we slow-infuse botanicals into, across nearly our entire serum and balm line — it's less an ingredient on a label and more the foundation everything else gets built on top of. Read more about why jojoba is the foundation of every Edenwild formula.
Calendula, Chamomile & Marshmallow Root
Three different plants, three different corners of European folk herbalism, and all three landed on the same job: calming skin that's had enough. Calendula has centuries of documented folk-herbal use across Europe, often grown directly in kitchen gardens specifically for this purpose — it wasn't an exotic import, it was something a household could grow and use itself. Chamomile carries a similarly long European herbal history, used both topically and as tea for generations.
Marshmallow root's soothing reputation goes back even further than either — ancient Greek and Egyptian use predates its adoption into European herbalism, where it eventually became a staple in its own right. The root contains natural mucilage, a gel-like substance that's part of why it developed such a lasting reputation for soothing effects, long before anyone had a name for the compound responsible.
We still reach for all three today for the same reason herbalists did generations ago — slow-infused into the jojoba base used in Nectar and several of our balms.
Helichrysum
Also called immortelle — a name that tells you something about how long people have believed in this one. Native to the Mediterranean, particularly the coastal regions and islands, helichrysum has been valued there for generations, both for its distinct scent and its place in traditional skin care practice across the region.
The plant itself is unusual to look at — small, papery yellow flowers that keep their shape and color for a remarkably long time after being cut, which is likely part of where the "immortelle" name comes from in the first place. That same resilience shows up in how the plant has held onto its place in skincare tradition across centuries, largely unchanged in reputation even as formulation methods around it have modernized.
Still earns its spot today — Edenwild uses helichrysum essential oil in Nectar as part of the formula's aromatic profile.
Sea Buckthorn
Sea buckthorn grows in genuinely brutal conditions — high altitude, extreme cold, poor soil, across Tibet, Mongolia, and Siberia. It's the kind of plant that survives where very little else does, which might be exactly why it turned out so nutrient-dense; plants that have to work harder to survive often concentrate more into what they produce.
Traditional medicine across that region has relied on the berries, seeds, and oil for centuries, long before it made its way into Western skincare in recent decades. What's notable about sea buckthorn oil specifically is the unusually wide range of naturally occurring fatty acids in one plant — most plant oils lean heavily toward one or two, while sea buckthorn carries a broader profile than most single-source oils typically offer.
Edenwild uses sea buckthorn in Alpenglow and Golden Root Antioxidant Balm.
Aloe Vera
Ancient Egyptians reportedly called it the plant of immortality — dramatic, maybe, but it's stuck around in skincare for thousands of years since. References to aloe appear in Egyptian medical texts, and it's tied to beauty rituals attributed to both Cleopatra and Nefertiti, though how much of that is verified history versus enduring legend is genuinely hard to untangle at this distance.
What's better documented is how far the plant's reputation traveled. Its use as a skin-soothing botanical carried forward through Greek and Roman practice, and separately developed its own traditional use across parts of Africa and Asia where the plant grows natively — multiple, largely independent traditions converging on the same basic use case. Still one of the most trusted and widely used botanicals in skincare today, for what it's worth — a reputation this durable is rare for any single ingredient.
Honey
Ancient Egypt used honey in skin preparations alongside milk and oils, a combination referenced in surviving texts and continued through Greek and Roman tradition afterward. Cleopatra's reputed milk-and-honey baths are probably the most famous version of this practice, even if the historical record on the specifics is thinner than the legend suggests.
Nobody in the ancient world had the vocabulary for "natural humectant," but they clearly understood the effect: honey pulls moisture in from the surrounding air and holds onto it, which is part of why it was reached for repeatedly across so many different eras and regions. It's not a new discovery. It's just a new word — humectant — for an old, repeatedly-observed effect. Edenwild uses honey in some of soaps which you can find here.
Rosehip Seed Oil
Rosehip seed oil traces back to the Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina, where the wild rose species it comes from is native. It only became widely known outside the region in recent decades, picked up by the broader skincare industry well after the tradition behind it was already centuries old.
The Mapuche didn't need a lab to tell them it worked — they'd been using it for generations before anyone measured what was actually in the oil. Modern analysis eventually found naturally occurring vitamin A and vitamin C in meaningful concentrations, along with essential fatty acids — a modern explanation arriving well after the fact for a plant a specific culture had already quietly figured out on its own.
French Green Clay
Different continents, different cultures, same instinct: rub mineral-rich clay on your skin, and something good happens. Egyptian, Roman, and various Indigenous traditions across the Americas all developed their own uses for clay independently, separated by oceans and centuries, with no possible way to have compared notes.
French green clay specifically gets its color and mineral profile from the particular geology of the regions in France where it's mined — decomposed plant matter and iron oxides mixed into the clay bed over a long geological timescale. It's one of the few ingredients on this list with a genuinely global, rather than single-origin, ancestral story — clay use wasn't handed down from one source culture to the rest of the world, it was independently discovered, over and over, by people with no way of knowing anyone else had figured out the same thing.
Who This Is For
If you're drawn to skincare with an actual history behind it — not a trend that showed up last year, but ingredients cultures have reached for across generations, tested by nothing more sophisticated than time and repeated use — this is basically the whole philosophy behind Edenwild. We didn't invent a single ingredient on this list. We just formulate them the way they were always meant to be used: minimally processed, given real time, chosen because they'd already proven themselves long before we ever got involved.
Would we put this on our daughters' skin? That's the question every Edenwild formula is held to. Formulated and made by Edenwild, a Wyoming-based ancestral skincare brand, near Yellowstone.
Read More
- Bakuchiol vs. Retinol: A Natural Anti-Aging Serum That Works
- Frankincense Resin Oil vs. Essential Oil: Why the Form Matters
- The Wyoming Approach to Wellness
- What Is Grass-Fed Tallow — and Why Is It So Good for Skin?
- Jojoba Oil: The Foundation of Every Edenwild Formula