As part of an effort to win his subjects’ loyalty, the Khmer king Jayavarman VII, who ruled the Angkor Empire from A.D. 1181 to 1218, launched what may have been Southeast Asia’s first state-run health care system. Across his empire’s territory, which stretched from the southern tip of Vietnam, through Cambodia, Laos, and parts of Thailand, the king ordered the construction of 102 hospitals called arogyasala. At these institutions, dedicated staffers such as astrologists and sacrificers dispensed measures of rice, honey, camphor, ginger, and other medicinal substances to patients.

Jayavarman VII’s government also seems to have invested in nonclinical forms of wellness. Along a sophisticated network of roads crisscrossing the empire, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of buildings spaced some seven to nine miles apart that are believed to have sheltered weary travelers. “These hubs included stone temples called vahni-griha, or fire shrines, which were solely the domain of the gods,” says University of Illinois Chicago archaeologist Mitch Hendrickson. “Around the stone temple structures, there were buildings made of more ephemeral materials, where people could enter and rest.” Jayavarman VII appears to have made it a priority to provide a comfortable experience for travelers in order to encourage them to use the roads and to boost the prestige of the empire as it absorbed new territory and brought disparate cultures into the fold. “In some ways, the rest houses are the direct equivalent to modern highway rest areas,” Hendrickson says. “They were safe places to stop, to pray, and to feed your water buffalo and cattle. Eventually whole communities likely coalesced around them.”

Like many people today, the Romans used makeup to reduce visible signs of aging and achieve glowing skin. Roman cosmetics ranged from homemade do-it-yourself remedies to high-end products, such as costly saffron eye shadow, that were targeted to a wealthy clientele. While ancient writers describe the ingredients and formulas for some cosmetics, very few examples of these products survive in the archaeological record. During excavations of an ancient boundary ditch at a Roman temple complex on the south bank of the Thames, archaeologists unearthed votive objects that included a small round tin canister dating to around A.D. 100 to 150. Upon opening the lid, they were surprised to find a white cream preserved inside the container— complete with two finger marks on the lid left by its last user.

Chemical analysis of the substance revealed its three primary surviving components, allowing researchers to re-create the cream. Animal fat gave the concoction an oily texture that moisturized the skin, explains Museum of London curator Francis Grew, while starch produced a powdery sheen. The third component, however, was entirely unexpected—tin, a metal that no written source lists as an ingredient of Roman cosmetics. Rather than lead-based whiteners that were normally used in Roman makeup, the creators of this product used tin, which would have produced a similarly fair tone. “For women in Roman society, a white complexion signified that they didn’t go outdoors or do hard work, and that they had servants who attended to their needs,” Grew says. “Considering the possible ritual importance of this ditch, could it be that this was some sort of offering to the god by way of thanks for the remarkable properties of this cream?”

Even under excruciating circumstances, members of oppressed communities may seek wellness through resistance and survival. The Danish government abolished the slave trade as of 1803. From then until 1848, when enslaved people in the Danish West Indies were officially emancipated, plantation owners, colonial officials, and European physicians sought to maintain the captive labor force they could no longer replenish from Africa. At Cane Garden, a sugar plantation on Saint Croix that operated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, enslaved people practiced self-care that contrasted with the medical treatment that was forced upon them. “Plantation hospitals were designed to keep enslaved people alive and to keep them working, which is a form of violence,” says San Francisco State University archaeologist Meredith Reifschneider, who led a team that excavated and analyzed botanical remains from the site of the plantation’s hospital building.

Reifschneider and her colleagues found evidence of a once-thriving kitchen garden where enslaved workers grew plant species that have both nutritional and therapeutic value. Some of these, including nightshades, purslane, and amaranth, may reflect knowledge of healing plants that people had brought to the West Indies from Africa. The team also uncovered extensive remains of pigs, goats, fish, and mollusks, as well as ceramic cooking pot fragments, suggesting that nurses nourished patients with stewlike meals. “We started to focus on the plants, animal resources, and cooking practices, and began looking at those things from a wellness standpoint,” says Reifschneider. “We realized the enslaved community focused on more than just physiological health, and worked toward fostering communal well-being.”