How Did Ancient Humans Go to the Toilet?

No toilet. No pipes. No toilet paper. So how did ancient humans go to the bathroom? From Neanderthal poop that rewrote history, to Babylonian toilet demons, Greek pottery wipes with your enemy's name on them, Roman sponges on sticks, Chinese pig toilets, medieval castle garderobes and the Great Stink of London, this is the surprisingly important history of the toilet. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 The toilet you never think about 0:53 Stone Age: behind a bush 2:03 What did they wipe with? 2:46 Water instead of paper 3:16 Ancient baby diapers 3:30 Coprolites: ancient poop 3:51 50,000-year-old Neanderthal poop 4:17 Villages and the first sanitation problems 4:56 Skara Brae 5:15 Mesopotamia and the toilet demon 5:49 Indus Valley plumbing 6:21 Minoan Crete 6:32 Ancient Egypt 6:44 Greek pottery wipes 7:06 A 2,500-year-old potty chair 7:18 Your enemy's name on a shard 7:36 Rome: aqueducts and sewers 7:49 The Roman public latrine 8:23 The sponge on a stick 8:39 Rats and the goddess of luck 9:02 What Herculaneum's sewer revealed 9:25 Roman urine and "money doesn't stink" 9:51 Were Romans healthier? 10:20 China's pig toilets 10:44 Hygiene sticks on the Silk Road 11:24 The first toilet paper 11:55 Edo Japan 12:08 Medieval castles 12:27 Chamber pots and "Gardyloo!" 12:48 Gong farmers 13:09 London's 128-seat toilet 13:25 The first flush toilet 13:46 The S-bend 14:05 The Great Stink 14:23 John Snow and cholera 14:46 London's sewers 15:05 Thomas Crapper 15:15 Toilet paper as we know it 15:44 So how did they do it? 16:17 Billions still without a toilet 16:46 One of humanity's greatest inventions 📚 Sources & further reading Neanderthal fecal remains at El Salt (PLOS ONE): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... History of water supply and sanitation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History... How Greeks and Romans wiped (JSTOR Daily): https://daily.jstor.org/this-is-how-t... Toilet hygiene in the classical era (BMJ): https://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e... Ancient Greek potty chair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potty_c... Roman latrines and the goddess Fortuna (Brandeis Magazine): https://www.brandeis.edu/magazine/202... Roman toilets and parasites, Mitchell 2016 (University of Cambridge): https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/r... The Herculaneum sewer (National Geographic): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/hi... Silk Road hygiene sticks (University of Cambridge): https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discus... History of toilet paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_... Whittington's Longhouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittin... Global sanitation today (UNICEF): https://data.unicef.org/topic/water-a... #ancienthumans #history #toilet