A short history of what candles are actually made from
Candle wax has never been one thing. Its recipe has always tracked whatever fat, oil or hydrocarbon was cheap and available at the time, which is why the US candle industry's own trade body opens its history of the subject with a plain statement of origins.
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Over the centuries, candle waxes have been developed from a variety of fats, oils and waxy-like substances derived from animals, insects, plants and rocks.
Tallow, rendered animal fat, was the everyday candle wax in Europe and the Americas until whale-oil spermaceti and then a genuinely animal-derived wax called stearin took over in the 1800s.
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Stearin wax, based on extracting stearic acid from animal fatty acids, was widely used in Europe.
What's actually on shelves now
None of that history describes the mainstream today. Paraffin, made from petroleum, became the standard wax in the 20th century and remains the most common candle wax worldwide, with no animal input at all. Two more recent options are vegetable from the start.
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Two vegetable-based candle waxes – soy wax and palm wax – were developed for commercial use in the candle market during the late 1990s by hydrogenating soybean and palm oils, respectively.
Beeswax remains a real exception on modern shelves, not a historical footnote: it's sold deliberately as its own category, prized for scent and burn quality, and it's an animal product regardless of how natural the marketing sounds. If a candle's wax type isn't printed on the label, paraffin is the safe default assumption; if it says beeswax, or an unlabelled 'wax blend' on an artisan candle, it's worth asking.