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.
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.
Humans have built on that knowledge to create the soaps and detergents we use to clean dishes, laundry, our homes and ourselves today. Evidence has been found that ancient Babylonians understood soap making as early as 2800 BC Archeologists have found soap-like material in historic clay cylinders from this time.
In prehistoric times people cleaned themselves with just plain water, clay, sand, pumice and ashes. Later, ancient Greeks bathed regularly and early Romans did also. The importance of cleanliness is mentioned in the old testament and other religious texts.
Washing in the Ancient World
The Greeks even invented a form of a shower, which sprayed bathers with water. Most Greeks washed in a bowl on a pedestal called a louterion though the rich sometimes had bathrooms. People rubbed themselves with olive oil and then rubbed it off with a tool called a strigil.
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.
Ancient Rome was famous for its sanitation: latrines, sewer systems, piped water and public baths believed to improve public health.
The Himba people live in one of the most extreme environments on earth with the harsh desert climate and the unavailability of potable water. However, their lack of bathing has not resulted into lack of personal hygiene.
By 1850, weekly bathing was the norm. By 1900, daily bathing was no longer rare. Bathing frequency only increased with improvements in plumbing, clean public water systems, and even more emphasis on hygiene by doctors.
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.
The first known recipe for soap calls for approximately one quart of oil and six quarts of potash (potassium leeched from wood ash). According to Rasmussen this would have combined to create an impure but useful liquid soap.
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.
The Romans didn't use soap: they cleaned themselves with olive oil and some sand to remove dead skin cells. Soap supposedly is a Gallic or Germanic invention. The soap was made of animal fats or olive oil and lye of wood ash or sodium hydroxide.
In the Mediterranean, soap was entirely unknown: Egyptians and Romans used oils for bathing and the Egyptians used natron, a crystallized rock of brine, to launder clothes.
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.
We asked our families and most people have a shower every day, but some people have more than one a day and some people have less then one a day so we are assuming the average person has one shower a day. Our conclusion: The average person spends just over 5 months of their life in the shower.
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.
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.
According to Egypt Today, “Based on the writings of Herodotus, ancient Egyptians used many healthy hygiene habits, such as washing and laundry. They also knew to use mint to make their breath fresh. According to Ancient History Online Encyclopedia, ancient Egyptians always tried to make their bodies clean.
The EPI, as of 2022, identified Denmark, Luxembourg, and Switzerland as the leading cleanest countries in the world.
Cavemen removed hair from their head and face to prevent mites and other insects from forming nests and laying eggs in their hair. How, you ask? Without the means to create a razor, cavemen had to get creative. They scraped off their hair with a sharpened rock or a seashell.
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.
The oldest accountable daily ritual of bathing can be traced to the ancient Indians. They used elaborate practices for personal hygiene with three daily baths and washing. These are recorded in the works called grihya sutras which date back to 500 BCE and are in practice today in some communities.