The Old Norse word for Saturday, laugardagr, literally means "washing day". This custom still survives here in countryside Eastern Europe where many people routinely go to sauna (banya) every Saturday (or Sunday like my family). Before the 20th century, a lot of Eastern Europe (especially Russia) still lived like they lived in the middle ages: 95% of the country were serfs on feudal property living in traditional wooden houses with no modern benefits of civilization, and the bathing culture was pervasive: there were saunas (banyas) everywhere, and most villages were close to a river so water access was not a problem. Saunas were also a place where people gave birth. I find it hard to believe that Russian peasants were living the same lifestyle for centuries and only recently decided to start bathing. My family comes from Old Believers, a religous group which rejected church reforms of the 1600's and went into hiding in taiga, they preserved pretty ancient customs and their bathing culture was pretty intricate: for example, there always must be a separate towel/bucket of water for head, body, feet - this wouldn't have developed without a rich bathing culture before. Those villagers who could not afford their own sauna bathed in... ovens (inside the house). It's one of the older customs still preserved in some places. The traditional oven was pretty large and a whole person could fit in it. My mother was bathed like that when she was a child in their Old Believer village. However, I don't know if this was specific to Eastern/Northern Europe or common in Western Europe, too. I remember reading that due to overpopulation and deforestation it was harder for West Europeans to have frequent bathing every week. But here, population wasn't dense and forests were abundant.
Its funny that western history distorts the history of the rest of the world.<p>I hear western kids saying <i>no one</i> used to bathe in the ancient times.<p>As an Indian, it was practically mandatory for each and every individual to take a bath at-least two times a day. Additionally the following customs were very prevalent till recent times.<p><pre><code> 1. Washing legs after coming home from outside.
2. Washing hands, face and legs before sitting to eat food.
3. Washing whole body after sex.
4. Washing legs before entering others homes.
5. Leaving footwear outside the *gate* of any home before entering it.
6. A full bath in a river / lake / house tank *before* sunrise and once *before* sunset.
</code></pre>
Also, body was supposed to be massaged with oil of sesame seeds (once a week), and greengram flour was rubbed on every part of the body. After sitting in the sun like this for a few minutes, the flour was scrubbed off by hand, and then a hot water bath taken.<p>For shampoo, two traditional herbs are recommended. Kunkudukai and shikakai. Both are used as it is without any processing. Kunkudukai would be crushed and mixed with water to form a liquid and then applied on head. Amazingly, it would form a lather when rubbed on the head. I remember doing this type of head bath every sunday, until about 2005. Any shampoo was forbidden in our home. The items were dead cheap too.<p>[Edit]<p>Kinkudukai is also called soapnut.<p><a href="https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/benefits-of-soapnuts-for-skin-hair-and-health/" rel="nofollow">https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/benefits-of-soapnuts-for...</a><p>The above site tends to exaggerate the benifits a bit, but it is believed that kunkudukai inhibhits dandruff and is anti-fungal and anti-bacterial.<p>By personal experience, it tastes absolutely vomit inducing bitter and will burn your eyes to high hell if as much as a diluted drop enters it.<p>Its a natural, safe and environmentally friendly way of taking a head bath.
ughh I dislike when pop history takes this smarmy tone and is also not particularly accurate.<p>> <i>In fact soap is a motherfucking medieval invention. Yes. It is. The Romans – whomst I don’t see a bunch of basics going around accusing of being filthy – did not, in fact have soap, in contrast. They usually washed using oil. Medieval people? Oh you better believe that they had soap.</i><p>Wait a minute, what about Aleppo soap? I thought the Romans knew of it and Wikipedia alleges the same in their article:<p>> Although it has been claimed that soap-making was introduced to the West from the Levant after the First Crusades, in fact, soap was known to the Romans in the first century AD and Zosimos of Panopolis described soap and soapmaking in c. 300 AD.<p>Citation: <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Greek_Fire_and_Gunpowder/fNZBSqd2cToC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA307&printsec=frontcover" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Greek_Fire...</a><p>Then the OP author goes on to say:<p>> <i>It was first introduced from the East, like most good stuff was at the time, but it took off rather quickly.</i><p>This contradicts their claim that soap was a medieval invention! It wasn't a medieval invention. It was adopted technology.<p>That's not a big deal I guess, but if you're going to make a rant about historical accuracies, what else isn't exactly accurate here? It seems the effort is put into the berating imaginary enemies rather than the writing.
There is a Hindu mythological story in India about how the elephant god ganpati/gajanan/ganesh(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha</a>) got his elephant head while his body is of a human.<p>The story goes something like this, Shiva/Shankar/Mahesh(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva</a>) is a god of destruction in Hinduism. When he was out in the forest, his wife Parvati was alone and had to go for a bath. But she was concerned what if some stranger gets into the house while she was bathing. So to prevent anyone getting into the house she removes the layer of sandalwood and turmeric paste she had applied to her body and makes an idol of a boy and puts life into him. As the boy comes to life she instructs him to guard the house and not let anyone enter while his mother(Parvati) is having a bath.<p>Her husband returns after a while. Parvati is still in the bath. And as he tries to enter the house, the boy prevents him from doing so saying that his mother has instructed him not to let anyone inside the house. Shiva, known for his temper, gets angry and throws his weapon, trishul(trident), at the boy which chops off his head and it falls somewhere in the forest. Parvati, when she returns from her bath sees the headless body of her son and gets angry at Shiva and demands that he bring the boy back to life. But there is a problem, the head is missing. So Shiva goes in search of the head into the forest but he is unable to find it. So when he sees an elephant in the forest, he chops off the head of the animal and attaches it to the boys body and puts life back into it. That is how people of HN, the Hindu god Ganpati got his elephant head :)<p>Now, did I mention this is a mythological story? So please be kind to this gentle soul. I only narrated this story because it includes the concept of bathing :D<p>There are lot of such stories in Indian mythology where there is mention of bathing.
If you read translations of early medieval Arabic language travelers that visited Europe, they were almost all universally appalled by the state of hygiene and sewage/waste in major cities in general.<p>Not saying people didn't bathe at all but it clearly didn't meet societally acceptable standards of an educated person from Cairo or Baghdad.
Had me right up until the last paragraph. One does not have to be a colonialist or carry bias to have misconceptions about the midevil period. Ignorance is a fine reason. I myself am a huge fan of history but mostly ignorant about that time period. It's just never been my jam. I'll admit I'd probably think the "bring out your dead" and "oh Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here" sketches in Monty Python's Holy Grail was somewhat accurate before reading the article.
Clicking through here led me down a medieval rabbit hole and I reading about medieval math education, it seems music was an integral part of mathematics at the time with arithmetic (numbers as abstract concepts), geometry (numbers in space), music (numbers in time) and astronomy (numbers in space and time).<p>These days using music or sound as an aid in mathematics is very uncommon. These days we only use graphs, diagrams, geometrical figures and. We have stopped using one of our senses for math. When did this happen?<p>I imagine sound could be useful for alternative ways of experiencing mathematical object as not just geometry, but also as ways to explore concepts in higher dimensions by using audio for some dimensions. In complex analysis, colors are used to visualize four dimensions but audio remains very niche.<p>A bunch of numbers in a table is often difficult to make sense of by looking at the numbers but can give many intuitive insights when visualized. I imagine there are probably things that are easier to make sense of if your hear it than visualize it. Maybe music should be put back in math education.
Tangential question: Why do humans place emphasis on bathing, when most other animals don't seem to need to do it? (I think in the US we bathe more than we actually need to, but on the other hand I assume that the strong cross-cultural emphasis indicates that we do actually need to do it to <i>some</i> degree to stay healthy.) Maybe something about our unusual skin, and how we sweat to stay cool?
Here are some contra points:<p>- Aztecs were burning incense around the conquistadors to hide their unpleasant body odor (documented)<p>- The Christian Church actually said bathing naked was forbidden<p>- the pope instructed all public bath to be closed<p>- The monks order clearly said to bath only once a year<p>- general decline of the cities caused that a lot of public baths to be closed. Rome had none in medieval time.<p>- Muslim and Byzantine records mentioned how dirty westener were<p>My understanding was that bathing was strongly discouraged by church and in places where church did not have a lot on influence or they become Christian latter like Skandinavia bathing was still considered important.
It's interesting to note that, when water is really scarce, people can take care of themselves without water. Himba people, living nomad life on savannas of Namibia and Angola, practically do not use water for everyday hygiene. Shaving heads (men), making dreads with mud (women), oiling body with liquid butter with ochre pigment from soil. Additionally, women use herbs incense as anti-microbial and fragrance.<p>Added: As culi points out in another comment (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32364340" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32364340</a>) "(...) ammonia oxidizing bacteria can oxidize our sweat and prevent us from stinking. AOBs are found in soils pretty much everywhere."
I thought it varied by country, class, etc. I remember reading that Anna of Kiev (if I'm not mistaken), after visiting France, had a culture shock that French aristocracy smelled badly, apparently due to inadequate bathing.
This article is peppered with factual errors. While none of them detract from the core idea, they do lead one to question Dr. Janega's scholarship. Here's a modest sampling:<p>- Soap is given as a medieval invention, but this is stretching to the extreme both the idea of "inventing soap" and the idea of "medieval." In reality it was widely made and used at least as a hair wash by the waning days of the Western Roman empire.<p>- The ingredients list for soap contains a number of equivalent or derived ingredients listed as though totally separate, as if the author weren't aware of the relationships and went copy-pasta crazy from mixed sources.<p>- Aleppo soap is described as if made exclusively from laurel oil (rather than the correct mixture of laurel and olive oils).<p>- The photo shown of a light brown bar of soap with a caption seeming to suggest that it's Castille soap is in all likelihood actually Aleppo soap (cf. the text of the Arabic seal, which is rather humorously shown upside-down).<p>- The description of a deodorant made using "salvia and sage" is rather perplexing, as salvia is the Latin word for sage... and the name of the modern genus of plants containing common sage. A reference to salvia in the colloquial modern sense of Salvia divinorum seems unlikely in the extreme.<p>All told, while this is an interesting read, and does contain some useful information, from a scholarly perspective it seems to be, at best, slipshod.
History is written by the upper class, especially in past times when only the upper caste could read or write.<p>Even if what the author says is true about medieval upper caste people (I don't doubt it), I have trouble believing that peasants could afford the cost and time required of regular bathing. Water didn't come easily unless you happened to live next to a river or have a well next to your house. We've all seen women in third world countries carrying water for cooking and drinking on their heads, often long distances. And we haven't even gotten to the costs of the other things she mentions. Poor people rarely ate meat because they couldn't afford it; where are they going to get animal fat to make soap?<p>The author doesn't provide any evidence, just makes claims using words to imply you're stupid if you doubt her. All the "photographic" evidence she provides all pretty clearly DO NOT depict poor people.
I feel very grateful for reddit.com/r/askhistorians. I feel like they are the only source I can trust on figuring out the best truth we know about history.
History is only an expedient story, not that much to do with reality.<p>We really can't know how people lived a 1000 years ago, despite what might appear to be mountains of evidence. This evidence is actually the creation of historians in the past century... and when you look at their sources for yourself, you will see that they are open to interpretation despite being presented as fact.<p>For the ruling structure today, saying that the peasants of yesteryear were dirty, and even the nobility, supports the idea that we are progressing and have never had it so good. As if better tech means we have better lives.<p>To me, it is a perfectly plausible idea that how people lived in the 'medieval' times was far more equitable, natural and healthy than today. But that story doesn't 'sell' - who would want the tech dystopia we are coding ourselves into, if a pastoral idyll were held up to it?<p>History is what is expedient for the present. It is the story the present governance structure would like you to believe.
Someone mentioned in the comments of TFA, but soap-making was an industry in a southern french town since ancient times. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille_soap" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille_soap</a>
I always had sensitive skin. I stopped using products in my hair, then I stopped showering my head, then I stopped showering altogether. Now I shower about once a month, washing only parts between the legs daily. I am the most smelly after I shower, that sour sweaty smell. Incidentally I read that this is some kind of fad in Hollywood.
In fact, maybe they bathed TOO much: <a href="https://going-medieval.com/2019/08/02/i-assure-you-medieval-people-bathed/" rel="nofollow">https://going-medieval.com/2019/08/02/i-assure-you-medieval-...</a><p>But they also gave us soap, there's that.
bathing and hygiene were not in direct correlation in ancient history, the correlation between unwashed hands, germs and diseases was long to be discovered.<p>Bathing was mostly a ritualistic activity or a social activity (see Roman thermal baths)<p>We know Romans, Egyptians and very possibly other cultures shaved themselves almost completely both as a social gathering activity (barbershops were very popular places for gossips and news) and to prevent lices.<p>So yeah they bathed, some ancient cultures did that a lot, they might have been clean people, doesn't mean their hygiene was generally good nor better than the civilizations before them.<p>They still walked around in cities or villages with no sewage systems where people and animals lived together.<p>It's no mistery and no wonder that medieval times were plagued by all kinds of diseases and epidemics.
I found Katherine’s Ashenburg „Dirt on clean” book a nice read on how perception hygiene evolved over ages. It definitely reads as popscience, but for uninitiated ignorants like myself it was pretty sufficient.
I see the author cites one of her other books in [6] as well.
You don’t need a whole tub to bathe. A person can take a reasonable “shower” with a bucket of water and a cup. It’s much easier to heat one bucket of water than to fill a whole tub. I would be surprised if peasants didn’t primarily take bucket baths.
Now I want to go inside a sauna, put some clay on my body. Detox, clean, mmmm and moisturize when done. Then get into freshly washed Egyptian cotton sheets to have a good night's sleep for 8 hours.
Not sure how true it is, but my HS European history teacher blamed the Catholic Church and nobility for misinformation regarding the so-called Dark Ages. Apparently, they weren't too happy about widespread atheism or peasants burning the tax and accounting records.
The content of the article was interesting but the writing style was stupid and infantile. You couldn't share this article with a colleague, a parent, or anyone who might not understand the "quirky" writing style filled with references to pop culture memes and expletives.<p>TL;DR immaturely written for no reason.
As it was explained to me, the soap people made themselves in the old days was so much better than today's, a bath could last you weeks, or even months.<p>This modern stuff you can buy barely lasts a day.