00:00What did ancient humans use to wipe after going to the bathroom? Throughout
00:06history people have used everything from their own hands to corn cobs to snow to
00:11clean up after bowel movements. Most of the material we don't have because it's
00:17organic or just disappeared according to Susan Morrison a medieval literature
00:21professor at Texas State University. However experts have been able to
00:25recover some samples. Some even had traces of feces and depictions of toilet
00:31paper's precursors in art and literature. One of the oldest materials on record for
00:36this purpose were wooden or bamboo sticks wrapped in cloth called hygiene sticks
00:41dating back to 2,000 years ago in China. From 332 BC to 642 AD during the
00:49Greco-Roman period another stick was used called a tesorium which had a sea
00:54sponge on the end and was left in public bathrooms for communal use. However it's
00:59also possible that these weren't used to clean people's behinds but the bathrooms
01:02themselves. Either way tesoriums were cleaned by dumping them in a bucket of
01:07salt or vinegar water. Greeks and Romans also wiped with flat disc-shaped ceramics
01:14called pissoi. Archaeologists have found these relics with traces of feces on them
01:19as well as an ancient wine cup featuring a man wiping his bum with pissoi. The abrasive
01:25characteristics of ceramics suggest that long-term use of pissoi could have
01:30resulted in local irritation, skin or mucosal damage or complications of
01:35external hemorrhoids according to the British Medical Journal. In the 8th
01:40century AD the Japanese another type of wooden stick called chugi to clean both
01:46the outside and inside of the anus, likely putting a stick up there. In the Middle
01:52Ages people also used moss, sedge, hay, straw and pieces of tapestry. Granted nowadays not
02:00everyone uses toilet paper. Water such as a gentle stream from a bidet keeps many
02:05people's undersides clean the world over.
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