The first time a woman noticed that she could make herself more attractive by arranging her hair in some special way was probably the first time a “comb” was used. A comb is simply any implement with “teeth” which go through hair, thereby arranging it.

There are people who live in New Guinea called Papuans. They have very crisp hair which grows in tight ringlets. Some people believe that in order to arrange these ringlets into a big mop at the top of the head, the Papuans must have invented the comb.

But combs are one of the oldest implements of man. Some that are made of bone, wood, and horn have been found in Swiss lake dwellings where primitive man lived.

The Egyptians had combs made of ivory. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City can be seen Egyptian combs made of ebony and ivory that are thousands of years old. The surprising thing is that they look exactly like some combs made today and could be used by any woman today.

Among the more primitive peoples, combs were made of whatever materials were most handy. For example, a comb might be made of bamboo in certain parts of Asia, whereas in the Polynesian Islands there were combs made of the midrib of a coconut palm and bound with fiber. In parts of New Guinea combs were made from buffalo horn.

The small pocket comb is not a modern invention; there are combs in museums that were found in Roman ruins which are handy little pocket combs made of ivory.

Combs also provided the opportunity, during the Middle Ages, for artists to decorate them very elaborately. There are combs with pictures of saints on them, combs with colored glass and gold, and combs with Latin inscriptions.