In existence since 2900 B.C. the city of Babylon had produced systems of writing and communication, literature, a codified set of laws, a calendar and system for ascertaining time. Wheeled vehicles became common – and water management evolved into irrigation dams, drains, basins, and personal bathrooms of their era’s rich and famous.
Yet the Zip-It wasn’t invented for another 4,900 years. Babylonians! Feh!
It’s hard to imagine what the ancient Babylonians went through when their drains clogged up.
Budding plumbers worked with clay mixed with finely chopped straw. Bronze was introduced about 2500 B.C. from outlying trade routes.
The rich households and the palaces had separate bathrooms; that is, rooms in which to “bathe” or refresh oneself with water or anointing of oil. Most sources agree that there were no bathtubs during this period of history. Nebuchadnezzar’s “bath” in all actuality was a shower, as slaves poured water over him as he washed with a soap made of ashes of certain plants and fats. Due to the texture of the concoction, his “shower” was probably like a detergent rinse.
It is thought that men who sought an audience with their ruler performed a kind of ritual washing before entering his sacred presence. Drains have been found beneath the hard-tamped floor of an anteroom. They were made from pots whose bottoms had been knocked out, set against a row of bricks that had been set on edge to form the rim of a basin.
Archaeologists have found evidence of systems for disposal of human waste in dwellings 10,000 years old. Waste disposal and running water were commonly incorporated in the palaces of royalty and priests as early as the time of the Indus Valley civilization (about 2500 to 1700 BC), and these systems were well developed during the Roman Empire. Plumbing was a firmly established feature in dwellings of even the less affluent by the end of the 19th century.
Up until the modern era, with the advent of Zip-It, the most used most widely used method of dealing with clogs was cursing. Zip-It is far more effective.
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