Table of Contents for Caveman Chemistry : 28 Projects, from the Creation of Fire to the Production of Plastics Chapter 19. Bath (Soap) 280. How soap is made from olive oil or tallow Mappae Clavicula ca. AD Nothing in the history of humankind, save for the cultivation of noble fire itself, can compare to the discovery of soap. This is how one of the Author's pyrophilic alter-egos would undoubtedly have begun the present chapter. Lucifer would have described a venerable history stretching back to the third millennium BC , when concoctions of ashes and fat were recorded on Sumerian clay tablets. In order to claim that these concoctions were soap, however, he would have to overlook the fact that these tablets make no mention of any detergent properties these mixtures might have had. He would have to find it unremarkable that pharoic Egypt and the empires of Greece and Rome failed to appropriate such a useful material, but relied instead on urine, various plants, clays, potash, and soda for doing the laundry. He would have to ignore the extensive Roman literature on personal hygiene, which describes the process of oiling the body and scraping the dirty oil off with an instrument called a strigil. No, an ancient origin for soap simply does not wash. The Samsonites would probably prefer the "old Roman legend" which places the invention of soap in the hands of the Goddess Athena. Runoff from animal sacrifices made at her temple on Sapo Hill, so the story goes, resulted in the accumulation of ashes and animal fat in the river below. Women washing clothes in this river found that their clothes came out whiter and brighter than usual and eventually traced the suds back to their source. But why, we might wonder, would the Romans have had an | |
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