Before soap, many people around the world used plain ol' water, with sand and mud as occasional exfoliants. Depending on where you lived and your financial status, you may have had access to different scented waters or oils that would be applied to your body and then wiped off to remove dirt and cover smell.
Humans have probably been bathing since the Stone Age, not least because the vast majority of European caves that contain Palaeolithic art are short distances from natural springs. By the Bronze Age, beginning around 5,000 years ago, washing had become very important.
Prior to that people used water only and the oils from flowers. In chambers, people had basins of water for washing the face and hands, and maybe a more intimate part of themselves… Rivers, lakes, ponds, etc… were used to taking dips and rinsing the filth from one's body.
In the 1700s, most people in the upper class seldom, if ever, bathed. They occasionally washed their faces and hands, and kept themselves “clean” by changing the white linens under their clothing. “The idea about cleanliness focused on their clothing, especially the clothes worn next to the skin,” Ward said.
Ancient Mesopotamians were first to produce a kind of soap by cooking fatty acids – like the fat rendered from a slaughtered cow, sheep or goat – together with water and an alkaline like lye, a caustic substance derived from wood ashes. The result was a greasy and smelly goop that lifted away dirt.
Not even the Greeks and Romans, who pioneered running water and public baths, used soap to clean their bodies. Instead, men and women immersed themselves in water baths and then smeared their bodies with scented olive oils. They used a metal or reed scraper called a strigil to remove any remaining oil or grime.
Though there is evidence that the ancient Greeks manufactured soap, too, it appears that ancient Greeks and Romans did not wash their bodies with it. Instead, they seemed to prefer to rub their bodies with blocks of clay, pumice, sand and ashes, rinse in water, and then cover themselves with oil.
Romans used what is called a “Tersorium” – a sea sponge stuck on the end of a stick that was kept in either a bucket of salt water or vinegar. The general population used a communal latrine in Roman times, which consisted of several holes cut in a slab of marble. Picture the hole you sit on in an outhouse.
Ancient Rome was famous for its sanitation: latrines, sewer systems, piped water and public baths believed to improve public health.
According to Ancient History Online Encyclopedia, ancient Egyptians always tried to make their bodies clean. They were the first to invent deodorant in history, which they did by mixing various spices, such as citrus and cinnamon.”
The Stone Age. Back in Paleolithic times (also known as the stone age), cleanliness was not considered important. There were no baths, no showers, and no soaps or scents. Or, to put it another way, if you go back a few thousand years, your ancestors were really, really smelly.
Though even wealthy families did not take a full bath daily, they were not unclean. It was the custom for most people to wash themselves in the morning, usually a sponge bath with a large washbasin and a pitcher of water on their bedroom washstands. Women might have added perfume to the water.
The waves of bubonic plague that blighted Europe repeatedly during the middle ages contributed to suspicion that bathing might expose the body to disease, and this fear culminated in England's remaining public bath-houses being closed by Royal decree of King Henry VIII in 1546.
To Bathe or Not to Bathe
In fact, westerners of his era believed bathing was downright dangerous. They feared that if they submerged themselves in water, they risked toxins infiltrating the body through its pores. Instead, they changed their shirts frequently and took “dry baths,” wiping themselves down with cloth.
Caption Options. The phenomenon of washing one's entire body daily in the West is something that comes from access to indoor plumbing in a modernized world. According to an article from JStor, it wasn't until the early 20th century when Americans began to take daily baths due to concerns about germs.
Cleanest respondents are the Bosnians (96%), followed by the Turks (94%). These high scores are no doubt relatable to wudu, the Islamic procedure for washing hands (and mouth, nostrils, arms, head and feet) as a means of ritual purification, for example prior to prayer.
The EPI, as of 2022, identified Denmark, Luxembourg, and Switzerland as the leading cleanest countries in the world.
Before the advent of toilet paper, Victorians used a variety of materials for personal hygiene, depending on their socio-economic status and cultural traditions. The most common options were water, leaves, corncobs, moss, hay, wool, rags, newspapers, and even seashells.
If you relieved yourself in a public latrine in ancient Rome, you may have used a tersorium to wipe. These ancient devices consisted of a stick with a vinegar- or salt water-soaked sponge attached.
Ancient Greeks often used stones ("pessoi") or fragments of ceramic ("ostraka") to wipe. Pessoi as wiping objects are found in Ancient Greek art, writings, and even proverbs. For example, an ancient Greek wine cup depicts a squatting man mid-wipe with a cane in one hand and a pessoi in the other.
Soap. Lots of different tribes seem to have discovered soap on their own but it's believed that the Celts introduced Britain to soap in AD 1000. The Celts made soap by shaping animal fat and plant ashes into a ball similar to a modern-day bar of soap.
The Chinese word for soap predates the country's first modern soaps by almost a millennium. Traditionally, residents of North China used the buds of the Chinese honey locust, known as zaojia, to freshen up.
To clean themselves while bathing, the Egyptians used natron – a soda ash that when blended with oil made soap. Natron was also used when mummifying the dead. The rich had bathing facilities in their places of residence while everyone else bathed in the Nile.