People, to me; “Wow you’re so interesting!!”
Me IRL; just spent three hours researching the history of soap.
Okay. So, soap? Our first recorded mention of it in history is on a tablet from 2800 BCE in Babylon. The first recorded recipe to make it? 2200 BCE in Babylon. It was scented with cassia oil.
All ancient soaps were made with an alkaline base of ash and water.
In 1500 BCE, Egyptians combined wood ash or alkali salts with animal and vegetable fats to make soap. If rich, they scented the soap with fragrant oils and spices. They used soap both for personal hygiene (which was very important in Egypt, and temples used a great deal of soap for ritual washing and purification) and to prepare wool for spinning and weaving.
The Assyrians made soap from sesame seed oil scented with cypress oil.
The Romans regarded soap only as a pomade for hair, as they preferred to rub olive oil into the skin and scrape it off with a strigil to clean themselves. There are actually written records of the Romans thinking the Gauls strange for using soap (which they made from animal fats) to wash their bodies regularly.
In ancient China, the pods of the Chinese Honeylocust or Soap Bean were dried and boiled, which resulted in a rich foamy soapy liquid that served admirably as soap.
During the Middle Ages, most soap produced in Europe from animal fats smelled unpleasant…like, well, rancid fat, since that’s what was usually used. More skilled soapmakers who used fresh ingredients and scented the soap with herbs could produce a better product. Soap was usually produced by the household using it, and it was considered women’s work. It was used in cleaning people, general cleaning, laundry, and wool production.
Soapwort was also often used to clean both the body and hair (soapwort is still an excellent wash for sensitive skin and scalps). It’s also called “Fullier’s herb;” Fulling refers to the process of cleaning and processing raw wool.
Nice smelling hard soaps with an olive oil base were luxury goods and imported from the Middle East.
The term “Shampoo” comes from the Hindi word chāmpo. Soap in India was made by boiling together native soapnuts and amala, which made a very effective and gentle soap solution. This was massaged into the skin and hair; the act of massaging in the cleaning compound was what the word
chāmpo refers to. (The massage was as much for therapeutic purposes as cleaning)
This habit was noted by early colonial traders visiting India, and the word chāmpo became ‘shampoo’ by the time it filtered back to Europe.
In the Americas, there were (are) an abundance of plants that produce native saponians. They were well known and used by native tribes. In the southwest, yucca root, on the west coast coastal woodfern, buffalo berry on the plains, soaproot in the PNW, slippery elm on the East coast and to the plains, ect.
In South America, pre-columban people in the Andes used the water from washing quinoa, which contains natural saponian that must be washed from the grain prior to food use. This was saved and used for personal hygiene and cleaning.
In Africa, soap is often made from such plant oils as shea, palm, and coconut, with the ash of select and often secret plants that are specifically gathered, dried, and burned to produce ash to saponify the oils. Recipes are often closely guarded family or community secrets. The ash in the soap gives it a characteristic dark color, and African black soap is noted to have antimicrobial action above and beyond that of many soaps, presumably from the select plants that are used to produce the ash it is made with.
Basically, everyone in history has always had a vested interest in not smelling like ass, and so that one weird hippy you know who claims that bathing isn’t good for you and strips the skin of natural oils is full of shit. Even before we knew how to make soap, we knew about plants that produce saponian and used them to wash ourselves.
Also regarding the ‘stripping the skin of oils’…we’ve been rubbing oil or fat into our clean, non-smelly, and now-dry skin for even longer than we’ve known about making soap.
Meanwhile, my skin:
Can’t strip natural oils off if you don’t make them in the first place
*tap forehead*Your skin and my skin are the same
Normal lotion does nothing. I have to go right to the heavy duty stuff with lanolin and shit.
The whole reason I learned to make my own salves is to keep myself in a constant supply of moisturizing wax balms and face oils.
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