| Nowadays, we use different products for personal cleanliness, laundry, dishwashing and household cleaning, |
| but this is very much a 20th-century development. |
| The origins of cleanliness date back to prehistoric times. |
| Since water is essential for life, |
| the earliest people lived near water and knew something about its cleansing properties - |
| at least that it rinsed mud off their hands. |
| During the excavation of ancient Babylon, |
| evidence was found that soapmaking was known as early as 2800 BC. |
| Archaeologists discovered cylinders made of clay, |
| with inscriptions on them saying that fats were boiled with ashes. |
| This is a method of making soap, |
| though there's no reference to the purpose of this material. |
| The early Greeks bathed for aesthetic reasons and apparently didn't use soap. |
| Instead, they cleaned their bodies with blocks of sand, pumice and ashes, |
| then anointed themselves with oil, |
| and scraped off the oil and dirt with a metal instrument known as a strigil. |
| They also used oil mixed with ashes. |
| Clothes were washed without soap in streams. |
| The ancient Germans and Gauls are also credited with discovering how to make a substance called 'soap', |
| made of melted animal fat and ashes. |
| They used this mixture to tint their hair red. |
| Soap got its name, according to an ancient Roman legend, from Mount Sapo, |
| where animals were sacrificed, leaving deposits of animal fat. |
| Rain washed these deposits, along with wood ashes, |
| down into the clay soil along the River Tiber. |
| Women found that this mixture greatly reduced the effort required to wash their clothes. |
| As Roman civilisation advanced, so did bathing. |
| The first of the famous Roman baths, supplied with water from their aqueducts, |
| was built around 312 BC. |
| The baths were luxurious, and bathing became very popular. |
| And by the second century AD, |
| the Greek physician Galen recommended soap for both medicinal and cleansing purposes. |
| After the fall of Rome in 467 AD |
| and the resulting decline in bathing habits, |
| much of Europe felt the impact of filth on public health. |
| This lack of personal cleanliness and related unsanitary living conditions |
| were major factors in the outbreaks of disease in the Middle Ages, |
| and especially the Black Death of the 14th century. |
| Nevertheless, soapmaking became an established craft in Europe, |
| and associations of soapmakers guarded their trade secrets closely. |
| Vegetable and animal oils were used with ashes of plants, |
| along with perfume, apparently for the first time. |
| Gradually more varieties of soap became available for shaving and shampooing, |
| as well as bathing and laundering. |
| A major step toward large-scale commercial soapmaking occurred in 1791, |
| when a French chemist, Nicholas Leblanc, patented a process for turning salt into soda ash, |
| or sodium carbonate. |
| Soda ash is the alkali obtained from ashes that combines with fat to form soap. |
| The Leblanc process yielded quantities of good-quality, inexpensive soda ash. |
| Modern soapmaking was born some 20 years later, |
| in the early 19th century, |
| with the discovery by Michel Eugene Chevreul, another French chemist, |
| of the chemical nature and relationship of fats, glycerine and fatty acids. |
| His studies established the basis for both fat and soap chemistry, |
| and soapmaking became a science. |
| Further developments during the 19th century made it easier and cheaper to manufacture soap. |
| Until the 19th century, soap was regarded as a luxury item, |
| and was heavily taxed in several countries. |
| As it became more readily available, it became an everyday necessity, |
| a development that was reinforced when the high tax was removed. |
| Soap was then something ordinary people could afford, |
| and cleanliness standards improved. |
| With this widespread use came the development of milder soaps for bathing |
| and soaps for use in the washing machines that were available to consumers by the turn of the 20th century. |