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History of Soap - Why the Ancients Washed With Dead Animals
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00:06Aleppo, Syria
00:08For close to a thousand years, the winding stone souks of this city's old town
00:14have been home to one of the world's oldest continuously running industries,
00:19families boiling enormous copper vats of olive oil and laurel berry oil with ash-derived lye,
00:26pouring the thick green mixture out onto stone floors.
00:30Cutting it into blocks and stacking it in towers to cure for months in dim, ancient storerooms.
00:37Aleppo soap, made from almost nothing but oil, water and ash,
00:42is considered by many historians to be one of the direct ancestors of nearly every bar of soap made on
00:49Earth today.
00:51Then, starting in 2012, the Syrian civil war tore directly through Aleppo's old city,
00:58a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and years of intense urban fighting badly damaged the historic souks,
01:06where that soap had been made for centuries.
01:09Some of the families who had passed the recipe down for generations lost their workshops entirely.
01:16Others managed to smuggle their equipment and their knowledge across the border into Turkey or Lebanon,
01:23determined to keep a craft older than most of the world's religions from disappearing in the middle of a war
01:30zone.
01:30A substance this simple boiled fat and ash and water has survived empires, plagues, and centuries of change.
01:39And it very nearly didn't survive the 21st century in the one city most closely tied to its history.
01:48This is where it begins.
01:51Go back almost 4,800 years to ancient Babylon.
01:58Archaeologists have recovered a clay cylinder, inscribed in cuneiform, dating to around 2800 BC,
02:06describing a formula made from water, an alkaline substance derived from ash and cassia oil.
02:15It's the oldest written soap recipe historians have ever found,
02:19and it wasn't made for personal hygiene at all.
02:22It was used to help clean and process wool during textile production,
02:28one of the earliest examples humans ever wrote down of deliberately combining fat and alkali to make something new.
02:36A few centuries later in Egypt, the Ebers papyrus,
02:40the same sprawling medical scroll from around 1550 BC that records treatments for wrinkles and crying infants,
02:49also describes combining animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to treat various skin ailments and for general washing.
02:59The basic chemistry behind almost every bar of soap you've ever used
03:04was already being written down on clay and papyrus,
03:08while the pyramids of Giza were still relatively new.
03:12Here's the actual reaction underneath all of it,
03:16and it's remarkably simple.
03:17Fat, whether it comes from rendered animal tallow or pressed olive oil,
03:23is made of long molecules called triglycerides.
03:27When you combine that fat with an alkali,
03:30historically lie leached out of wood ash soaked in water,
03:34a chemical reaction called saponification
03:37breaks those triglyceride molecules apart
03:41and rearranges them into soap.
03:44The resulting molecule has a strange split personality,
03:49one end that's attracted to water and one end that's attracted to grease and oil.
03:55That's the entire secret behind why soap actually works.
04:00It grabs onto the oily dirt your skin has been holding onto
04:04and then lets the water carry the whole tangled mess away.
04:09Every civilization in this story,
04:12whether they understood the chemistry or not,
04:15had independently discovered the same basic trick,
04:19boil fat with ash,
04:21and you get something that cleans in a way plain water never could on its own.
04:27There's a popular legend about where the word soap itself comes from,
04:32and it's worth telling exactly because it isn't true.
04:36According to the story,
04:38ancient Romans sacrificed animals on a hill called Mount Sappo,
04:43and rain would wash the melted tallow and wood ash from the sacrificial fires
04:48down into the clay along the Tiber River,
04:52where women washing clothes discovered the mixture cleaned laundry far better than water alone.
04:58It's a great story.
05:00Historians and etymologists studying it, though,
05:04have never found solid evidence that a place called Mount Sappo ever actually existed,
05:09and the tale doesn't appear in any ancient source.
05:13The real origin of the word is a lot less dramatic,
05:17but it comes from an actual documented Roman text.
05:21The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder,
05:24writing in the first century AD,
05:26describes a substance he calls Sappo,
05:29made from tallow and ash,
05:31that Gallic and Germanic tribes used,
05:34not primarily to clean themselves,
05:37but as a pomade to redden and style their hair,
05:40the word that would eventually spread across the entire world
05:44started out as ancient hair product,
05:46not a hygiene breakthrough.
05:48By the time of the Islamic Golden Age,
05:52roughly the 8th through 13th centuries,
05:55chemists and craftsmen across the Middle East
05:57had taken that crude, ash and fat mixture
06:01and turned it into something genuinely refined.
06:04In Aleppo specifically,
06:07the very city we opened this story in,
06:11soap makers began replacing animal tallow
06:13with pressed olive oil and laurel berry oil,
06:17producing a firm, long-lasting solid bar,
06:21rather than the greasy, unstable paste
06:24that had defined soap for thousands of years before.
06:29Traders carried that technique west,
06:32and it eventually took root in Castile,
06:35a region in Spain,
06:37where local producers,
06:39using the abundant olive oil of the Mediterranean,
06:43began making what became known across Europe
06:45simply as Castile soap,
06:48prized for centuries afterward
06:50as one of the finest, mildest soaps money could buy.
06:55Before we go further,
06:57if you're new here,
06:59this channel covers the hidden histories
07:02behind the things that shaped the world.
07:05Real stories,
07:06real numbers,
07:07no filler,
07:08new video every week.
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07:13and drop a comment telling me where you're watching from.
07:17But as soap quietly improved in the Islamic world,
07:21bathing culture in medieval Europe
07:23was actually collapsing.
07:25Public bathhouses,
07:28once a genuine cornerstone of daily Roman life,
07:32gradually became associated in many European towns
07:35with vice and immorality,
07:37rather than cleanliness.
07:39And some municipal authorities
07:41went as far as shutting them down entirely,
07:44or restricting their use,
07:47viewing regular bathing as more connected to sin
07:50than to health.
07:52Soap didn't disappear from Europe during this period,
07:56but for most people,
07:57it became a rare,
07:59occasional luxury rather than a daily habit,
08:02something wealthier households might have access to,
08:06while everyone else may do with plain water,
08:09or nothing at all.
08:10And then,
08:12in England,
08:12an actual government policy
08:14made that gap even worse,
08:16on purpose,
08:17for well over 200 years.
08:19Starting in the early 17th century,
08:22the English crown began taxing soap as a luxury good,
08:26and the tax grew stricter
08:28and more aggressively enforced
08:30over the following two centuries.
08:32Tax officials reportedly padlocked soap makers
08:36boiling vats shut
08:37whenever they weren't actively being used,
08:40specifically to prevent any unrecorded,
08:43untaxed batches from slipping past inspectors.
08:46A level of government surveillance applied to bars of soap
08:50that most nations reserve for far more dangerous goods.
08:55The tax made legally produced soap,
08:57expensive enough that it remained genuinely out of reach
09:01for much of England's poorer population for generations.
09:04At exactly the same moment,
09:07industrial cities were growing overcrowded,
09:10filthy,
09:10and increasingly vulnerable
09:12to the same water-borne diseases
09:14that would eventually force London
09:16to rebuild its entire sewer system.
09:20It took until 1853,
09:23in the middle of the same wave
09:25of Victorian public health reform
09:27that gave the city its modern sewers,
09:31for Parliament to finally repeal
09:33what had become known
09:34as one of the most widely resented
09:37and clearly counterproductive taxes
09:39in British history.
09:42For roughly two centuries,
09:44the British government
09:46had quietly made basic hygiene a luxury tax,
09:49and its own poorest citizens
09:52paid the price in disease.
09:54Once that barrier came down,
09:57industrial capitalism moved in fast.
10:00In 1789,
10:02a London barber named Andrew Pears
10:05developed a refined,
10:07translucent bar soap,
10:09gentler on the skin
10:10than the harsh,
10:11often caustic soaps of the era,
10:14and built an entire company around it.
10:17Nearly a century later,
10:19in 1886,
10:20Pears Soap purchased the rights
10:23to a hugely popular painting
10:25called Bubbles
10:26by the acclaimed artist
10:28John Everett Millais,
10:30and turned it into an advertisement,
10:33sparking a genuine controversy
10:35in the art world
10:36over whether fine art
10:37should ever be used
10:39to sell a bar of soap.
10:41It's considered
10:42one of the earliest true examples
10:44of celebrity-style branding
10:46in modern advertising history.
10:49Not long after,
10:51in 1885,
10:53an English industrialist
10:54named William Lever,
10:56launched Sunlight Soap,
10:57one of the first
10:58pre-packaged,
10:59individually-branded bars
11:01sold at scale,
11:02and built an entire company town
11:04around his factory
11:05called Port Sunlight,
11:07complete with housing,
11:09schools,
11:09and healthcare for his workers,
11:11a genuinely progressive model
11:13for its era,
11:14though one that also came
11:16with Lever exercising
11:17tight, paternalistic control
11:19over nearly every part
11:21of his employees' lives.
11:23Across the Atlantic,
11:24Procter & Gamble
11:25stumbled into one
11:27of the most famous accidents
11:28in American business history
11:31in 1879,
11:33when a factory worker
11:35left a soap mixing machine
11:37running longer than intended,
11:39whipping far more air
11:41into the batch than usual.
11:43The resulting bars
11:44floated on water,
11:46and when customers
11:47started specifically requesting
11:50more of that unusual floating soap,
11:52the company realized
11:54it had accidentally
11:55created a hit.
11:57They named it Ivory,
11:59and built an entire
12:01advertising empire
12:02around a mistake
12:03nobody had actually planned.
12:08Quick question
12:10before we go further.
12:11Right now,
12:12in 2026,
12:13roughly how many people
12:15worldwide
12:15do you think
12:16still don't have
12:18basic access
12:19to soap and clean water
12:20for hand washing at home?
12:22Take a real guess
12:23and drop it in the comments.
12:25I'll give you the actual figure
12:27from Global Health Researchers
12:29before this video is over.
12:32Because as ancient
12:34and universal as soap
12:35has become,
12:36its modern supply chain
12:39has quietly picked up
12:40a genuinely dark ingredient
12:42of its own.
12:43Palm oil is now
12:45one of the most
12:46common raw materials
12:47in mass-produced soap
12:49and countless
12:50other everyday products,
12:51and its production
12:53has been extensively
12:54documented
12:55by journalists
12:56and human rights
12:57organizations
12:57as being tied
12:59to severe deforestation
13:01across Indonesia
13:02and Malaysia,
13:03destroying critical habitat
13:05for orangutans
13:06and other endangered species,
13:08alongside well-documented
13:10labor abuses
13:11on plantations,
13:13including forced labor
13:14and,
13:15in some investigated cases,
13:18child labor.
13:19An Associated Press
13:20investigation
13:21published in 2020
13:23traced supply chains
13:25from specific
13:26palm oil plantations
13:27where workers
13:28described
13:29exploitative conditions
13:31all the way
13:32through to shelves
13:33of ordinary consumer products
13:35sold around the world.
13:37The same basic promise
13:38soap has always carried,
13:40an easy,
13:41affordable way
13:42to get clean,
13:43now runs through
13:44supply chains
13:45where the people
13:46actually producing
13:47a key ingredient
13:48often can't access
13:50anything close
13:51to that same
13:52basic standard
13:53of living themselves.
13:55Regulators have caught up
13:57with soap's chemistry too,
13:59at least partly.
14:01Starting in the 1990s,
14:04manufacturers began adding
14:06an antibacterial chemical
14:08called triclosan
14:10to a huge range
14:11of soaps and body washes,
14:13marketed aggressively
14:15as a superior
14:16germ-killing upgrade
14:18over ordinary soap.
14:19In September 2016,
14:22the United States Food
14:24and Drug Administration
14:25issued a final rule
14:26banning triclosan
14:28and 18-related chemicals
14:30from over-the-counter
14:32antibacterial washes entirely.
14:34After manufacturers
14:36were unable to demonstrate
14:38the ingredient
14:39actually worked
14:40any better than plain soap
14:42and water,
14:42alongside genuine
14:44scientific concerns
14:45about hormone disruption
14:47and its contribution
14:49to antibiotic resistance.
14:52After decades of marketing
14:54built on the idea
14:55that ordinary soap
14:57simply wasn't good enough anymore,
15:00federal regulators
15:01effectively concluded
15:02the opposite was true
15:04all along.
15:06So here's the answer
15:07to that question
15:08from earlier.
15:09According to figures
15:10compiled by the
15:11World Health Organization
15:13and UNICEF's
15:14Global Monitoring Program,
15:15an estimated
15:17two billion people
15:18worldwide
15:19still lack access
15:20to basic
15:21hand-washing facilities,
15:22soap and clean water
15:24together
15:24in their own homes.
15:26Two billion people
15:28missing access
15:29to one of the
15:30single cheapest,
15:31most effective
15:32pieces of technology
15:33human beings
15:34have ever invented.
15:36A technology
15:37first written down
15:38on a clay tablet
15:39nearly 5,000 years ago.
15:42And nothing in recent memory
15:43proved just how much
15:44that technology
15:45still matters
15:46quite like the year 2020.
15:49When the COVID-19 pandemic
15:51swept across the globe,
15:53public health authorities
15:54everywhere,
15:55the World Health Organization,
15:57the CDC,
15:59and national governments
16:00on every continent
16:01all converged
16:02on the exact same
16:04first line of defense,
16:05wash your hands
16:06with soap
16:07for at least 20 seconds.
16:09It wasn't a new discovery.
16:11It was pure,
16:12ancient chemistry,
16:14the same fat
16:15and water molecule structure
16:16first stumbled onto
16:18in Babylon,
16:19doing precisely
16:20what it has always done,
16:22grabbing onto
16:22the fatty outer layer
16:24of the virus
16:24and physically
16:25tearing it apart,
16:27then letting running water
16:29carry the wreckage
16:30down the drain.
16:31In the middle
16:32of the most disruptive
16:34global health crisis
16:35in over a century,
16:37humanity's single
16:39most effective,
16:40most universally
16:41available defense
16:42turned out to be
16:43a 5,000-year-old technology
16:46sitting in a dish
16:47next to every sink
16:48on Earth.
16:50Slow down for a second
16:52because this is
16:53the whole point.
16:54Nothing about soap
16:55has ever really changed
16:57at the molecular level,
16:59fat plus alkali,
17:01arranged into a molecule
17:03that bridges water
17:04and grease.
17:05What's changed
17:06over and over
17:08across 5,000 years
17:09is who gets
17:10to actually use it
17:12and at what cost
17:13to someone else.
17:14Babylonian weavers
17:16used it to process wool.
17:18Roman tribes
17:19used it to dye
17:20their hair.
17:21England taxed it
17:23out of reach
17:23of its own poorest citizens
17:25for two centuries
17:26while people died
17:27of diseases
17:28soap and clean water
17:30could have prevented.
17:31A war tore through
17:33the city
17:33most closely tied
17:35to its refinement.
17:37And today,
17:38a substance
17:39sitting in nearly
17:40every household
17:41on the planet
17:42is manufactured,
17:44in part,
17:45using an ingredient
17:46tied to real,
17:48documented human
17:49suffering on plantations
17:51most of us
17:52will never see
17:53or think about.
17:55So here's the question
17:57I actually want you
17:58to sit with.
17:59How many times a day
18:00do you use something
18:01so completely ordinary,
18:03so unquestioned,
18:05that you've genuinely
18:06never once wondered
18:08where it actually
18:09came from
18:09or who made the version
18:11sitting in your own
18:12bathroom possible?
18:14If you've ever thought
18:16about where your
18:17everyday products
18:18actually come from,
18:19or, you know,
18:20a family tradition,
18:21a craft,
18:23a recipe like
18:24Aleppo soap makers
18:25passing theirs down
18:26for generations,
18:28I want to hear about it
18:29in the comments.
18:30I read every single one.
18:32If this is the kind
18:34of story you want
18:35more of,
18:36the real history
18:37behind the things
18:38that quietly run
18:39your life,
18:40hit subscribe
18:40and smash the like button.
18:43It genuinely tells me
18:44you want to keep
18:45going deeper.
18:46And share this
18:47with someone
18:47who's never once
18:49looked twice at the bar
18:50sitting next to their sink.
18:52Because somewhere
18:53in Aleppo right now,
18:55in a workshop
18:56that may not even
18:57be standing
18:57in the same building
18:59it once was,
19:00someone is still
19:01boiling olive oil
19:02and laurel
19:03and ash together
19:04in exactly the same
19:06basic ratio
19:07a Babylonian scribe
19:09pressed into wet clay
19:10nearly 5,000 years ago,
19:13keeping alive
19:14the single oldest,
19:16simplest
19:16and most quietly
19:18essential piece
19:19of chemistry
19:20human beings
19:21have ever figured out
19:22how to make
19:23with their own hands.
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