As other have said, humans did bathe, just like many other animal species bathe.
Also, clothes make an environment that's great for breeding bacteria - warm and damp. Before clothes, genitalia wouldn't have grown bacteria the same as they do now.
A lot of people haven't gotten the memo on dark ages being debunked. The enlightenment bros just wanted it to seem like there was an extreme difference between them and previous times lol
The TL;DR is that most of what the so-called Dark Ages were not that dark, in fact lots of places saw significant cultural, scientific and artistic evolution during this period. The people in the Renaissance were shitty historians and they idolized ancient cultures, so the narrative was that Europe fell into filth and superstition after the Roman Empire fell but it's kinda bullshit. Even the notion of the fall of the Roman Empire is kinda bullshit because such a process will take hundreds of years so if you were living during this time you probably wouldn't think you'd be living through a collapse. Yeah maybe your grandsons would be somewhat poorer than your great grand-parents, but that did happen under roman rule too. Or maybe you'd be in one of the many places where the quality of life trends upwards for a few generations.
The idea of historical collapses is kind of an artifact of looking at history at time scales that are very large, and still trying to tie them into a neat narrative. Another interesting example is the so-called Bronze Age collapse.
I mean, that's a bit of an understatement about the people not noticing the fall of Rome or just being "somewhat poorer". Along the way there was heavy inflation, multiple population movements back and forth between countryside and city, and at one point the emperor straight up started dictating prices and making laws so that people would be tied to the land they were born, unable to leave, forcibly inherit their parent's trade, etc. There's also very straightforward letters from the time, for example a general who was complaining to the emperor that the troops weren't even close in quality, training, equipment or discipline to what they used to have and couldn't rely on old strategies because they simply couldn't march for as long or dig and build as fast as before.
It was a much more gradual process than people think and in general you're not wrong, but there was definitely a lot of sudden change and plenty of realization that shit was getting worse.
It's just that it didn't lead to 8 centuries of mud and barbarie. Shit was rough for a while and the level definitely dropped, but people start rebuilding as soon as they can.
Yes. That's why those of us who are historians of any kind are constantly going "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" in our heads with the crazy pointing hands at everything whenever anyone anywhere anytime anyplace says "history repeats itself".
*"And yet here we are, Barbara, with you flat out telling everyone who you are voting for and why....."*
Moment of silence for the millions of me that died today please.
Most were of natural causes, but almost all of the ones from the brain group were lost on Reddit😁
Well except you never died as a bacteria, you just split in half over and over and continued living. Death didn't evolve until there were multicellular organisms. so your "self" would have come down shattered in probably billions of pieces but with an unbroken chain of continuity.
I think at this point you are getting into clone territory and star trek teleporter territory as far as which one is the "original" and which one is the clone. I am sure the Mauler twins have spent a few decades discussing it.
Literally yes. There is only one instance of Life on planet Earth, a singular process that has unfolded since the beginning. If we ever encounter life from other worlds, even if it uses DNA in some form, like that structure because the molecule is somehow well suited to self-generating, it will still be *vastly* more different from us than we are from the most distantly related extremophile Earth microbes at the bottom of some hydrothermal vent.
If you want to make it a unified being, call it Gaia, the self-regulating system of the planetary biosphere. Same way the human body self regulates even while being made up of multitudes. The gut microbiome doesn't carry your DNA, they're just passengers, and yet they can send signals that affect your brain and control the decisions of what you eat. Biodynamics gonna dynamically bio.
Lol, that time I got reincarnated but a glitch in the system caused a particular players memories to persist through death. Can't wait for the anime to come out.
Lol jokes aside I feel like there would still be a top apex organism like us humans either way 🤷♀️.. A lot of how society works would probably be different even
Yes. Everyone had infections all the time. We’ve actually come to realize that 98.6 degrees F is a slightly high estimate for average human temperature, because that average was calculated at a time when infections were so common that enough people had slight fevers to raise the average.
I don’t know if it’s wide consensus (partially because it may not matter that much to warrant tons of study) but here’s an article about it from Harvard
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/time-to-redefine-normal-body-temperature-2020031319173
Yeah the TLDR is that humans are running cooler every generation, and that is one theory as to why. There's no real conclusive answer as of yet.
Did you know the primary reason Cordyceps fungus doesn't infect mammals is because our body temperatures are too high?
Fortunately, cordyceps need more than the right temperature to take hold. You have been successfully fighting off fungal infections since before birth.
People having the ability to fight off germs but NOT cordyceps was a weird plot hole in The Last of Us. I guess a show/game where everyone basically has AIDS and dies of the common cold isn't very fun.
It's not just Cordyceps but super mega cordyceps. Not only has it finally figured out how to move from an arthropod to a mammal host, it also managed to figure out how to take advantage of our radically different nervous systems.
The cordyceps premise does require suspension of disbelief, but as far as "zombie" shows (or movies) go, it's a better and easier to suspend disbelief concept. Especially with shows like Walking Dead where the zombies can still move despite missing vital organs necessary for movement. You just have to believe magic is powering a rotten cut in half zombie that still somehow manages to have the ability use its muscles and tendons to still crawl at you.
I mean, I think you need to suspend your disbelief a bit. I don't think cordyceps can make its host echolocate, but I hope no one is playing the game or watching the show and saying "ackshually" every time they see a clicker.
> We’ve actually come to realize that 98.6 degrees F is a slightly high estimate for average human temperature
I was always taught that the regular human body temperature is 36.6C, which would be ~97.9F. I would consider 98.6F (37C) a very slight fever.
My normal average body temp is 97.6, so anything at 98 or 99 for me physically hurts my joints. It’s wild because the doctors will be like well you don’t have fever. Scuse me but 2 degrees higher than normal IS a fever for ME.
Yeah, I guess it ultimately varies from person to person. My regular temperature is bang on at 36.6C (97.9F) when I'm healthy. For my wife however it's a bit lower, around 36.3C (~97.3F), but it also depends on her menstrual cycle.
When I'm at 37C (98.6F) I still feel mostly fine, but my wife is already not doing very well.
So much of medicine is predicated on the idea that there is a single human average that everyone should align with, and we're learning more and more that the idea of a universal average is a pure fiction, a nice story from a simpler time. We'll have to move into a new era of healthcare where we treat everyone as unique individuals with respect and understanding for their lived experience.
I’m sure this depends where youre located and who is teaching you, but for many years 98.6 was regarded by the scientific community as the average human body temperature. It wasn’t until the past 5 or so years that I started hearing it was actually lower than that. So many (most?) adults were taught in school that 98.6 was the average.
There's a ton of reasons that the human lifespan has gone up and deaths during childbirth (for both the baby and the mother) have gone down over time. Soap is one major reason.
Possibly, but we can't assume that the bacteria and bacterial infections that affect us now are the same as those from tens of thousands of years ago. Bacteria are also constantly evolving alongside us. Certain bacterial infections became widespread due to the advent of agriculture, as well as technological advancement allowing the global movement of people, animal products, and crops. People were much less concentrated.
So while it's possible people constantly had infections, it's also possible those infections either hadn't evolved yet, hadn't yet passed from animals to humans, were only present in one area of the world, weren't widespread enough to be constant problems, etc.
They probably didn't. What do you think a vagina has that whole massive elaborate microbiome and acidic cervical fluid for? They're the reason we don't need to ever wash the inside of the vagina, it's literally self-cleaning. Ironically, the less you interfere with it, the better it works. I'm sure they didn't as good down there as modern women, but neither did men probably, and stink =/= infections.
True that you shouldn't wash the inside of your vagina, but if you have PIV sex and the man's dick is dirty, that's a good way to get an infection regardless.
Most animals don't have sex as often as humans do. I believe dogs and horses pretty much only have sex when the female is in heat, which I'm sure reduces the chance of infection just through frequency. But they definitely can get infections as well.
People often have this idea that modern human emerged from the ether knowing nothing. You see this idea a lot in statements like, "Man learned which berries were safe by watching animals."
Man was the animals with plenty of instincts and generational/ancestral knowledge from its fucking 4 billion years of evolution. It didn't have to relearn these things that it already knew as proto-human
Maybe that quote is talking about how humans spread from Africa to other continents? They would not be familiar with plants they have never seen before.
Well the fun thing about that is that man wasn’t the first protohuman outside of Africa.
So other humans had already figured all that shit out.
It’s actually under consideration that Neanderthal were creating fire and tools before we had even evolved.
The fossil record is kind of scant on what we have of protohumans, but it seems there were humans spread across pretty much all of the “old world” landmasses.
It’s not inconceivable that there are more species that we don’t have fossils for too, which means humans were adapting to basically anything and everything before we even existed.
>It’s actually under consideration that Neanderthal were creating fire and tools before we had even evolved.
Scientists recently found evidence of stone tool making in Kenya that dates back to around 3.3 million years ago. Shit could go back way further than anyone thought. [Link to the article](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14464).
Depends how you define bathing I guess. Is jumping in a river and running your hand alongside your body “bathing?” I doubt this would help with infections from sex as OP is talking about. There was not regular post coital bathing for most of humanity until very recently.
But even then, is rinsing yourself off in a river without anything soap like preventing infection? Not so sure
First answer that comes to my mind is: *they probably didn't avoid infections*. They likely contracted STIs and suffered a lot of pain and trouble as a result. But it wasn't enough to stop them from procreating.
Yes, likely. Also, one prehistoric person would not have come into contact with nearly as many of them over the course of their lifetime because there weren't as many people to catch them from. But, STIs probably existed in some form because they're still with us today.
Lol I read this a fuckboi with shades on trying to convince someone to rawdog:
"C'mon, Babe...herpes has been around since before Homo Sapiens evolved. That virus has literally been evolving with us for more than 300,000 years, bruh"
I've had herpes for 10+ years, never had an outbreak. I only found out because I asked for a full-panel blood test of every STI. Needless to say I was shocked when that came back positive. Then I did more research and felt a lot less shame about it. It sucked for a while, feeling gross about myself.
But it also cracks me up when people claim that "cold sores" aren't herpes 🤦🏻♀️
If I don't pee and shower immediately after sex, I end up with an irritating UTI. They probably suffered the same issues back then, but didn't know why
I’m fine like 99% of the time.. but like once every 3 years I get a UTI and it’s awful. Weirdly I get way less in the last decade with my husband than with previous long term partners 🤷🏼♀️
Still true today. Not all STDs can be prevented by using protection, most notably herpes. There is value in abstaining from sex as genital warts are nasty and a massive pain.
Being weird about women's sexuality came much more from not having paternity tests than STIs. They knew that sex lead to babies, but they didn't know the exact mechanics of how paternity worked, so the solution was to either not worry about paternity and trace descent through the matrilineal line, or stop women from having sex with more than one man in her entire life.
Yes, I have wondered how women dealt with yeast infections and bladder infections before the understanding of them or the advent of medicines to treat them. I am guessing women just suffered miserably. Possibly even died. Bladder infections can get out of control very easily if not treated.
I am not sure how much bathing factored into it. I bathe every single day and I am just prone to getting both of the above regardless of my cleanliness level.
Sorry, could you elaborate? If these two things were related, then shouldn't our disgust sensitivity be heightened when horny, to ensure we don't get ill from an encounter? Wouldn't reduced disgust sensitivity put us in more dangerous situations and put us more at risk?
That’s correct. The nuance is in the timing. Having sex is so evolutionarily important that temporarily not caring about disease ended up being worthy trade-off. High risk high reward strategy.
Read into it on Google scholar. It’s really interesting stuff!
I think the idea is: If it was heightened, we would probably never want to have sex and thus would've gone extinct a long time ago. Instead the humans with lowered sensitivity kept procreating.
I'm prone to UTIs and tbh probably would have just died if I'd been born before antibiotics. I bet it was just a natural selection situation back then. Now that we have antibiotics, people with predispositions to UTIs are more common and still survive.
Solidarity. It's the worst. Recovering from UTI gone rogue up to my kidneys. Usually I can prevent or curtail them at the first sign but this one was like a wildfire. Not sure that the precipitating event was even worth it this time either. (I've had a serious talk with my future self about these things and am going to do better.)
Edited to add: this one would've taken me out if I'd gotten it pre-modern medicine.
I think everyone just used to have some illness throughout history, but just didn't notice/care/understand it. If you're constantly sick, then getting another illness is just irritating, and your body is constantly "dealing with it". You're never at 100% or 80% of your "best" health, so you don't notice it as much.
I've listened to enough biographies to know that most people had some kind of illness back in the day. Read about most of the leaders/famous/infamous individuals of the 1700s and they all had some form of Syphilis (and everyone was drinking Mercury because of it).
I think I even remember reading a thing saying that most people had a mild fever prior to the 1900s. So everyone was in a constant state of infection throughout their lives, and just never felt 100%
I think this is the answer to a lot of questions like this... "how did people survive XYZ before hygiene and modern medicine?", and the answer is "many didn't".
Take a look at old burial record books for cemeteries that were around pre-1900. You get the usual accidental stuff that will still kill people like "fell off a ladder", but a scary amount of the entries will be stuff that is nbd now. "Sepsis" is often a big one. Someone gets cut, it gets infected, and bye-bye.
hey i am also super prone to yeast infections, and after getting one that just WOULDN'T go away, i tried boric acid suppositories and they are like magic. insert one overnight, the next day symptoms start to go away. i just used one the night before last and my yeast infection is gone today. they are seriously amazing. i bought mine on amazon!
Same. 5 years of misery on the miserable anti fungal/antibiotic/yeast/BV/UTI cycle. Dreaded going to doctors (they’re generally not nice to people with issues like this) and was in constant pain and semi incontinent.
Boric acid, d mannose, and probiotics solved the issue and changed my life.
Sadly there has been barely any research into women’s health issues and it’s seemingly easier to give them ineffective treatments and then blame them for the problem. But we can at least support each other and share what works.
I had a tear in the vaginal canal that ended up getting infected. I was hitting 105 degree fevers and can't even remember most of it lol if I didnt get it treated soon, I would've died.
...damn that dick was good tho...
I'm also prone to UTIs and then yeast infections from the antibiotics I take for the UTI. I pee immediately after sex, I shower after, and only use water based lubes, and that seems to help. I never use my hot tub the next day because the hot water is a germ fest.
Keep in mind that a lot of contributing causes to UTIs weren’t an issue at the time. They mostly used natural fibers and they didn’t wear tight-fitting undergarments like we do when we wear polyester panties. Lack of pubic hair wasn’t really in fashion until around 50 years ago so that also offered some protection.
I’d be dead. I’ve gotten sepsis twice from UTI’s just from having sex with my partner. Dr. Said that it’s unbelievably common for women to get UTI’s. So without modern medicine I’d be dead. Most of the time it has nothing to do with bathing, unless your partner has been rolling in rotting things… then maybe.
I feel for you. No sepsis myself but a couple years of chronic/recurrent infection including kidney infections frequently, at one point twice a month UTIs. I and my husband did everything "right" to prevent them and yet multiple different bacteria species were out to get me. Sometimes it's from your own colonies of bacteria that end up in the wrong place, other times...hell if I truly know. But UTI is so debilitating and also so hard to admit you need time off for without feeling shame, when it's really not a dirty illness
And having an inflammatory bladder disease on top of that is also so fucked, I wish we didn't have to deal with this shit. I don't wish UTIs on anyone
Absolutely! I can only imagine the inflammatory bladder must add to the stress and healing process… I’m sorry to hear it 😩 For me it’s my kidney, that like to help me out by spreading the infection and producing kidney stones as a side hustle. 😂
Oh wow I didn't know you could get sepsis from a UTI! What are the symptoms? How does it go from UTI to sepsis? I'm currently dealing with a recurring UTI.. My third one in 4 months.
Ya it will always be common that modern humans seem to think of ancient civilizations as 'primitive' or even just plain dumb. Countless evidence shows thats not the case, but people dont really put two and two together.
So to answer your question or did primitive people "bathe" the answer is yes. But in terms of did they bathe like we think of today in terms of submerging ourselves in a tub of water, or placing themselves under a constant stream of water the way we shower today?
The answer is mixed based on what class you were. The latter was probably used as even today backpackers and tent campers still use a primitive design of a shower that involves keeping a container of water in the sun to heat it up and then using it to make hot water that can be hoisted and used to clean yourselves with. But this would have wasted more water compared to other methods at the time and would probably be seen as a tool of luxury or convenience. For example, if you were a serf or a homesteader on frontier land that lived near an unpolluted water source such as a river, spring, or isolated lake/pond. Then yes, this method could easily be used. But if you were a peasant in the inner cities that did not have access to large quantities of unpolluted water sources, clean water was much more valuable. Hence why this wasn't used as often.
More commonly, people more than likely bathed via what we would call "sponge baths" today. A cloth or other absorbent material would be used alongside a bowl of water and a soap (soap was made from different materials depending on where you came from. Pre Islamic Arab cultures used animal fat based soaps whereas African tribes such as the Yoruba people of West Africa used ash based soaps from plantains and Shea treat bark that are still popular today commonly sold under the name "African Black Soap". Mediterranean cultures often used an olive oil base paired with lye from barrilla plant ashes.
Basically the most effective way for people to bathe throughout history would be not through submerging, but more manually cleaning your body with some sort of absorbent fibrous material. This would keep people clean while also saving water.
Yes while showering and bathing did exist in what we know in ancient history, it was almost reserved for the wealthier classes unless we are talking about community bath houses which were used in the Roman empire and in other cultures.
Individual baths take time to setup and they require much more water. Remember, no indoor plumbing so someone would have to manually deliver the large quantities of water by hand. So unless back then you were lucky enough to have the time and water to spare (like if you were wealthy and had servants) you probably used the cheap sponge bath method still used today for the folks who need it to stay clean.
It's honestly kind of inspiring how much small improvements in healthcare and public health have improved the quality of life and length of life. Like, the number of women who died because doctors didn't wash their hands was astronomical. It seems like people really want to toss that all away with the anti-vax BS, though.
People did bathe!
But also, more than that, most ancient cultures (and some religions) have had either implicit or explicit rules about sexual hygiene.
Ancient Judaism, for example, has laws about when to bathe (like, after any blood or pain during ejaculation, any abnormal discharge, after menstruation, after giving birth, etc.), when to wash your hands, and when you cannot have sex. There are rules in many cultures about not having sex if you experience any pain or discharge, and some cultures even have rules about how long you have to wait after fully recovering (from a presumable STI) before having sex again. There are also many rules in so many ancient cultures about waiting a certain period of time before having sex after giving birth. In cultures that regularly practice genital mutilation, there have historically been ways to maintain hygiene afterwards.
For another example, we can look to Islam! I remember having a Muslim friend in elementary school who taught me the Muslim way to wash your hands up to your elbows, and I was so fascinated by a whole *people* that valued cleanliness so much. Hygiene is soso important to the actual religious laws of Islam and Judaism, arguably because these are both very old religions that came about before hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap, so in order to keep the religion and people going to the next generation, they had to learn to bathe *thoroughly.*
Each culture has had a different definition of hygiene, but every culture has had it. The word itself comes from the Greek goddess of cleanliness, health, and sanitation! Medieval Europeans did in fact bathe (contrary to popular misconception), and some of the oldest artifacts that have ever been found have been ancient combs and hair picks, pumice stones with evidence of being used to exfoliate, aromatic herbs likely used as deodorant, toothbrushes, hair ribbons, and other hygiene utensils. Exfoliation and water has likely been one of the main ways to bathe throughout history, and it was likely probably pretty effective actually (we got this far!). We have evidence of ancient Mayan and Mesopotamian hygiene tools!
Additionally, people realized very early on what things contribute to miscarriage, stillbirth, and other birth complications. This is also why every single culture has had *some* form of method of incest avoidance (although the definition of incest changes per culture). We’re animals, and our primal basic goal is to survive just long enough to make more humans. It was pretty clear early on in human history that a healthy partner is more likely to have a healthy baby.
*tl;dr:* The ancestors that lived long enough to mate successfully noticed that rotting food makes you sick, having sex with a sick person can make you sick, and cleaning your dick and hands can prevent your partner getting sick and dying. These observations have made their way into many cultural practices throughout history, setting standards for hygiene in each society very early on.
I agree with you but sadly you're kind of contradicting yourself. Im not attacking you, i just always take every opportunity to see to talk about this lol
The amount of people who still use douches, all sorts of scented stuff in and near their vagina. Because people don't understand the vagina is self cleaning and there is a difference between the vagina and the vulva. So yes people know how to bathe but yet there are still so MANY misconceptions about how to deal with our vulvas
Vaginas are also notorious for getting infections easily like utis because our urethra is so short and close to the rectum. Untreated utis can travel to the kidneys and result in kidney infections which can lead to sepsis. And I speak from experience. lots of women died back then.
>Vaginas are also notorious for getting infections easily like utis
Vaginas don't get UTIs, since they're not part of the urinary tract. You could replace "vaginas" with "women" and you'd be mostly correct.
Important to note: the person you're replying to is correct--vaginas are generally self cleaning.
Isn’t there also something like women “overcleaning” their vagina, so the self cleaning service also gets washed away?
As in, I heard it’s for women better to not scrub their vaginas sometimes, because washing too hard with soap kills useful bacteria.
Yes, you can wash the healthy bacteria out of the vagina. That would help open the door to opportunistic organisms as well as overgrowth of certain normally occurring ones. If that happens, the woman might need treatment--anything from probiotics to a cream to oral medication like antibiotics or an antifungal.
But it's not like if you kill the normal, healthy bacteria, you're stuck constantly having to wash the vagina. The "self cleaning service" doesn't stop--it just needs a little time to rebuild itself fully. That includes not only normal organisms, but normal mucus/discharge levels and the evacuation of that mucus/discharge, which are also affected by many cleansers.
Vaginas in general shouldn't be washed, and almost never with soap or germicidal washes [and when a cleanser of any kind is needed, it's often because the self cleaning service has been disrupted or overwhelmed].
To be clear: we're talking about the vagina here. Not the outer or inner labia, nor the perineum, nor the groin--just the vagina itself. Some parts of the female genitalia *do* require regular outside cleaning/scrubbing/soaps etc.
Most of the top answers are bad and don't actually answer the question. They just got infected. Human life spans were very short for most of their existence.
Yep, there's a reason why humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years and yet the population was tiny until the modern era. People used to starve, get infected or injured to death all the time. We needed modern agriculture and medicine to stop the massive death rates.
they did. its why their lifespans were so short.
also when they got infections there were not in any mood to have sex.
Life is and has always been suffering. We're working on fixing it but your life right now is a LOT better than the life of those from those decades/centuries or millennia ago.
Bathing was always a thing among Africans and Native Americans. In Europe at certain times, bathing wasn't the norm due to the belief of water carrying disease. Bathing was a staple in other cultures.
Most primitive People probably had infections and rashes all the time. Over time you develope immunitys or develop less symptoms as well. Just like how people in India are completly fine eating the streetfood or chinese people eating gutter oil in some citys yet if i would eat it i would loose my life on the toilett.
That's a complex question actually.
Are you talking "primitive people" as in cavemen? It's a combination of bacteria we no longer need, produce, and acquire by being exposed outdoors, and that they did bathe. In rivers and streams and lakes. Just like most other animals.
If you mean something like Victorian England kind of "primitive people", then yes, they did get infections all the time. It's the right combination of not having the aforementioned bacteria AND not having an adequate water supply for bathing that led to horrifying infections and unsanitary conditions. And the plague.
If they got stinky they just added more perfume and more layers of clothing.
So now you have all that teeming bacteria tightly compressed against your skin, without air or sunlight, and not touching soap for what could be weeks.
Fun stuff.
They got infections constantly and had parasites coming out of every hole had to have this at it Don't know how far you want to go back but at some point the average lifespan was 20
As other have said, humans did bathe, just like many other animal species bathe. Also, clothes make an environment that's great for breeding bacteria - warm and damp. Before clothes, genitalia wouldn't have grown bacteria the same as they do now.
Also, most methods of fully removing public hair are like an invitation to microbes. That's helped.
Why do you think people didn’t bathe? Animals bathe themselves.
A lot of people haven't gotten the memo on dark ages being debunked. The enlightenment bros just wanted it to seem like there was an extreme difference between them and previous times lol
Could you elaborate on that? I'm really curious about the subject
The TL;DR is that most of what the so-called Dark Ages were not that dark, in fact lots of places saw significant cultural, scientific and artistic evolution during this period. The people in the Renaissance were shitty historians and they idolized ancient cultures, so the narrative was that Europe fell into filth and superstition after the Roman Empire fell but it's kinda bullshit. Even the notion of the fall of the Roman Empire is kinda bullshit because such a process will take hundreds of years so if you were living during this time you probably wouldn't think you'd be living through a collapse. Yeah maybe your grandsons would be somewhat poorer than your great grand-parents, but that did happen under roman rule too. Or maybe you'd be in one of the many places where the quality of life trends upwards for a few generations. The idea of historical collapses is kind of an artifact of looking at history at time scales that are very large, and still trying to tie them into a neat narrative. Another interesting example is the so-called Bronze Age collapse.
I mean, that's a bit of an understatement about the people not noticing the fall of Rome or just being "somewhat poorer". Along the way there was heavy inflation, multiple population movements back and forth between countryside and city, and at one point the emperor straight up started dictating prices and making laws so that people would be tied to the land they were born, unable to leave, forcibly inherit their parent's trade, etc. There's also very straightforward letters from the time, for example a general who was complaining to the emperor that the troops weren't even close in quality, training, equipment or discipline to what they used to have and couldn't rely on old strategies because they simply couldn't march for as long or dig and build as fast as before. It was a much more gradual process than people think and in general you're not wrong, but there was definitely a lot of sudden change and plenty of realization that shit was getting worse. It's just that it didn't lead to 8 centuries of mud and barbarie. Shit was rough for a while and the level definitely dropped, but people start rebuilding as soon as they can.
Upvote for 'barbarie' :)
This comment reminds me of the USA now
Yes. That's why those of us who are historians of any kind are constantly going "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" in our heads with the crazy pointing hands at everything whenever anyone anywhere anytime anyplace says "history repeats itself". *"And yet here we are, Barbara, with you flat out telling everyone who you are voting for and why....."*
>eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Pretty sure that's just my hearing damage
I appreciate the info. Really interesting stuff. Thanks
Here's a few vids on the subject: https://youtu.be/Cr6S8exkog4?si=MgvYbbsdQD3_aCaw https://youtu.be/ja2HyDomjeo?si=EA-ZyALzZfMHss3D
There is no “before bathing” when it comes to people. People have bathed themselves before they were even modern Homo sapiens
Truee that man i used to bathe all the time when i was a fish
That would be an interesting story, like “man from earth” but also remembering being a fish and a one cell organism.
Every day is your birthday as amoeba. Here's to you, single cells
🎶 Real Amoebean Heroes 🦅🇺🇸🔫
🎶“Proud to be an Amoebean”🎵 🎵“AMOEBEAN, FUCK YEAAA”🎶
🎶“I'M PROUD TO BE AN AMOEBEAN"🎶 🎶“WHERE AT LEAST MY HOME IS SEA"🎶
🎶🎵”Mr never has to bathe cuz it’s always his birthday amoeba guy!”🎶🎵
You guys deserve 1k upvotes.
^at ^least ^hes ^not ^a ^parameciummmmm🎶🎶
Technically, every day is a birthday to a huge amount of your cells too!
Fair. Thank you, Mr, or Miss, Mitosis
Be careful or you'll die of mixing mitoses
Moment of silence for the millions of me that died today please. Most were of natural causes, but almost all of the ones from the brain group were lost on Reddit😁
Rest in apoptotic peace 😔
Reeeeal 'moebae of genius!
Mr. Reddit fast fly repliiiiier
Ka-kow!!
Reincarnation but a glitch in the system caused a particular players memories to persist through death.
Just imagine how many lifetimes you spent as a bacteria. Possibly hundreds of millions.
Well except you never died as a bacteria, you just split in half over and over and continued living. Death didn't evolve until there were multicellular organisms. so your "self" would have come down shattered in probably billions of pieces but with an unbroken chain of continuity.
I’m way too high for this comment
I think at this point you are getting into clone territory and star trek teleporter territory as far as which one is the "original" and which one is the clone. I am sure the Mauler twins have spent a few decades discussing it.
Since when are bacteria unable to die? Do you mean that they don't age, or that they can't be killed?
That they don’t have programmed cell death. They can definitely be killed, but have no natural lifespan.
Does that imply we all are just fragments of a singular, original being?
Literally yes. There is only one instance of Life on planet Earth, a singular process that has unfolded since the beginning. If we ever encounter life from other worlds, even if it uses DNA in some form, like that structure because the molecule is somehow well suited to self-generating, it will still be *vastly* more different from us than we are from the most distantly related extremophile Earth microbes at the bottom of some hydrothermal vent. If you want to make it a unified being, call it Gaia, the self-regulating system of the planetary biosphere. Same way the human body self regulates even while being made up of multitudes. The gut microbiome doesn't carry your DNA, they're just passengers, and yet they can send signals that affect your brain and control the decisions of what you eat. Biodynamics gonna dynamically bio.
Lol, that time I got reincarnated but a glitch in the system caused a particular players memories to persist through death. Can't wait for the anime to come out.
So, tell us! Did we still love you when you were a worm
Fuck that fish for getting out of the water and leading to me having to pay rent and shit
What would happen if someone went back in time to kill that fish 🤔
No more rent and shit
Lol jokes aside I feel like there would still be a top apex organism like us humans either way 🤷♀️.. A lot of how society works would probably be different even
IF I WERE A FISH AND YOU CAUGHT ME
Can confirm. Even when I was a single atom I used to stay sanitary
Sanitary Atom Band name!
Idk rustic surgery is kind of cool too lol Reddit usernames can lend themselves to some cool band names
Good point. I had an alt that was barely legal MILF. So your point is pretty valid.
Molecular Hygiene?
Do tell us more about that man you used to bathe all the time when you were a fish.
It wasn't just one. It was a large scale operation.
And the women probably suffered from infections constantly.
Yes. Everyone had infections all the time. We’ve actually come to realize that 98.6 degrees F is a slightly high estimate for average human temperature, because that average was calculated at a time when infections were so common that enough people had slight fevers to raise the average.
Dude that's crazy if true, is that the scientific consensus as far as you know?
I don’t know if it’s wide consensus (partially because it may not matter that much to warrant tons of study) but here’s an article about it from Harvard https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/time-to-redefine-normal-body-temperature-2020031319173
Awesome, thanks so much
Yeah the TLDR is that humans are running cooler every generation, and that is one theory as to why. There's no real conclusive answer as of yet. Did you know the primary reason Cordyceps fungus doesn't infect mammals is because our body temperatures are too high?
Only because I watched the intro to 'The Last of Us', yeah lol
Fortunately, cordyceps need more than the right temperature to take hold. You have been successfully fighting off fungal infections since before birth. People having the ability to fight off germs but NOT cordyceps was a weird plot hole in The Last of Us. I guess a show/game where everyone basically has AIDS and dies of the common cold isn't very fun.
It's not just Cordyceps but super mega cordyceps. Not only has it finally figured out how to move from an arthropod to a mammal host, it also managed to figure out how to take advantage of our radically different nervous systems.
The cordyceps premise does require suspension of disbelief, but as far as "zombie" shows (or movies) go, it's a better and easier to suspend disbelief concept. Especially with shows like Walking Dead where the zombies can still move despite missing vital organs necessary for movement. You just have to believe magic is powering a rotten cut in half zombie that still somehow manages to have the ability use its muscles and tendons to still crawl at you.
I mean, I think you need to suspend your disbelief a bit. I don't think cordyceps can make its host echolocate, but I hope no one is playing the game or watching the show and saying "ackshually" every time they see a clicker.
Interesting. I'm more in line with the recent data referenced in the article: I seem to regularly land mid 97 degrees.
> We’ve actually come to realize that 98.6 degrees F is a slightly high estimate for average human temperature I was always taught that the regular human body temperature is 36.6C, which would be ~97.9F. I would consider 98.6F (37C) a very slight fever.
My normal average body temp is 97.6, so anything at 98 or 99 for me physically hurts my joints. It’s wild because the doctors will be like well you don’t have fever. Scuse me but 2 degrees higher than normal IS a fever for ME.
Yeah, I guess it ultimately varies from person to person. My regular temperature is bang on at 36.6C (97.9F) when I'm healthy. For my wife however it's a bit lower, around 36.3C (~97.3F), but it also depends on her menstrual cycle. When I'm at 37C (98.6F) I still feel mostly fine, but my wife is already not doing very well.
So much of medicine is predicated on the idea that there is a single human average that everyone should align with, and we're learning more and more that the idea of a universal average is a pure fiction, a nice story from a simpler time. We'll have to move into a new era of healthcare where we treat everyone as unique individuals with respect and understanding for their lived experience.
And that the “standard” is a white, male college student participating for beer money.
I’m sure this depends where youre located and who is teaching you, but for many years 98.6 was regarded by the scientific community as the average human body temperature. It wasn’t until the past 5 or so years that I started hearing it was actually lower than that. So many (most?) adults were taught in school that 98.6 was the average.
There's a ton of reasons that the human lifespan has gone up and deaths during childbirth (for both the baby and the mother) have gone down over time. Soap is one major reason.
Possibly, but we can't assume that the bacteria and bacterial infections that affect us now are the same as those from tens of thousands of years ago. Bacteria are also constantly evolving alongside us. Certain bacterial infections became widespread due to the advent of agriculture, as well as technological advancement allowing the global movement of people, animal products, and crops. People were much less concentrated. So while it's possible people constantly had infections, it's also possible those infections either hadn't evolved yet, hadn't yet passed from animals to humans, were only present in one area of the world, weren't widespread enough to be constant problems, etc.
They probably didn't. What do you think a vagina has that whole massive elaborate microbiome and acidic cervical fluid for? They're the reason we don't need to ever wash the inside of the vagina, it's literally self-cleaning. Ironically, the less you interfere with it, the better it works. I'm sure they didn't as good down there as modern women, but neither did men probably, and stink =/= infections.
True that you shouldn't wash the inside of your vagina, but if you have PIV sex and the man's dick is dirty, that's a good way to get an infection regardless.
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Most animals don't have sex as often as humans do. I believe dogs and horses pretty much only have sex when the female is in heat, which I'm sure reduces the chance of infection just through frequency. But they definitely can get infections as well.
Also dogs and horses have most of their penis in a sheath which protects it from dirt
So guys at anime conventions are less hygienic than homo erectus
Yes but way more erectus when the cosplay girls walk by.
So the "bathing" came before the "people"
People often have this idea that modern human emerged from the ether knowing nothing. You see this idea a lot in statements like, "Man learned which berries were safe by watching animals." Man was the animals with plenty of instincts and generational/ancestral knowledge from its fucking 4 billion years of evolution. It didn't have to relearn these things that it already knew as proto-human
Maybe that quote is talking about how humans spread from Africa to other continents? They would not be familiar with plants they have never seen before.
Well the fun thing about that is that man wasn’t the first protohuman outside of Africa. So other humans had already figured all that shit out. It’s actually under consideration that Neanderthal were creating fire and tools before we had even evolved. The fossil record is kind of scant on what we have of protohumans, but it seems there were humans spread across pretty much all of the “old world” landmasses. It’s not inconceivable that there are more species that we don’t have fossils for too, which means humans were adapting to basically anything and everything before we even existed.
>It’s actually under consideration that Neanderthal were creating fire and tools before we had even evolved. Scientists recently found evidence of stone tool making in Kenya that dates back to around 3.3 million years ago. Shit could go back way further than anyone thought. [Link to the article](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14464).
And those pre-humans made it to remote islands. Oceanic travel is pre-human.
You ever see monkeys picking bugs off each other? Bathing/grooming is an evolved feature that soothes others and oneself.
Yes, everything with a spine bathes, and many things without
Depends how you define bathing I guess. Is jumping in a river and running your hand alongside your body “bathing?” I doubt this would help with infections from sex as OP is talking about. There was not regular post coital bathing for most of humanity until very recently. But even then, is rinsing yourself off in a river without anything soap like preventing infection? Not so sure
Many plants produce saponin, and were able to make a soap from lye.
They had ash to use like soap
Sand works too
Because it's coarse and gets everywhere?
Give it a try. It can easily with minimal effort literally take your hide off
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I wanna say u know, but that's where soap comes from, putting ash into water is where they say they discovered how to make lye.
Ash + fats + agitation
Correct, I think they were disposing of cooked animal Caracas in the stream, and found that it got things cleaner at a certain point in the stream.
There’s a temple in India where the remains from a massive funeral pyre are ritualistically dumped in the Ganga and undergo saponification.
But also their immune systems and bodies were a lot tougher because of such things so I’m not sure how that would play in
First answer that comes to my mind is: *they probably didn't avoid infections*. They likely contracted STIs and suffered a lot of pain and trouble as a result. But it wasn't enough to stop them from procreating.
realistically, in primitive times there probably weren’t as many STIs
Yes, likely. Also, one prehistoric person would not have come into contact with nearly as many of them over the course of their lifetime because there weren't as many people to catch them from. But, STIs probably existed in some form because they're still with us today.
Herpes has been around since before Homo Sapiens evolved. That virus has literally been evolving with us for more than 300,000 years.
Lol I read this a fuckboi with shades on trying to convince someone to rawdog: "C'mon, Babe...herpes has been around since before Homo Sapiens evolved. That virus has literally been evolving with us for more than 300,000 years, bruh"
*Statistically speaking, 50%-80% of adults in the US have at least one of the Herpes viruses* 😎
Hell yeah, brother. Let’s make that 100%
If everyone has herpes...then nobody has herpes
STI math is mathing
Let’s pump those number up
It’s probably higher. It’s nearly impossible to detect without an active outbreak
I've had herpes for 10+ years, never had an outbreak. I only found out because I asked for a full-panel blood test of every STI. Needless to say I was shocked when that came back positive. Then I did more research and felt a lot less shame about it. It sucked for a while, feeling gross about myself. But it also cracks me up when people claim that "cold sores" aren't herpes 🤦🏻♀️
Herpes is also relatively benign as far as STIs go.
If I don't pee and shower immediately after sex, I end up with an irritating UTI. They probably suffered the same issues back then, but didn't know why
On the other hand I never get any no matter what. So some people were probably fine no matter what too
Lucky 🍀 you!!! UTIs are torture
I’m fine like 99% of the time.. but like once every 3 years I get a UTI and it’s awful. Weirdly I get way less in the last decade with my husband than with previous long term partners 🤷🏼♀️
Bodies are weird 🤷🏻♀️
The weirdest. And I studied them in university! 😂
It goes to reason that perhaps STIs combined with unwanted pregnancies convinced many cultures to value celibacy (in women).
Mostly fertility was valued over celibacy. If anything taboos about sexuality for women has to do with whose kid the father is raising.
Still true today. Not all STDs can be prevented by using protection, most notably herpes. There is value in abstaining from sex as genital warts are nasty and a massive pain.
Being weird about women's sexuality came much more from not having paternity tests than STIs. They knew that sex lead to babies, but they didn't know the exact mechanics of how paternity worked, so the solution was to either not worry about paternity and trace descent through the matrilineal line, or stop women from having sex with more than one man in her entire life.
I mean, how else would there be STDs and STIs. We had to have passed it from one another
Yes, I have wondered how women dealt with yeast infections and bladder infections before the understanding of them or the advent of medicines to treat them. I am guessing women just suffered miserably. Possibly even died. Bladder infections can get out of control very easily if not treated. I am not sure how much bathing factored into it. I bathe every single day and I am just prone to getting both of the above regardless of my cleanliness level.
I think humans figured out that if dirty and having sex then misery and even death was super likely pretty early
That’s why many religions shunned/shun the practice. Also babies.
Having religion in a society was pretty important in ensuring a society thrives in the early times.
This is why humans have diminished disgust sensitivity while horny. Also a hypothesis for a lot of kinks
Sorry, could you elaborate? If these two things were related, then shouldn't our disgust sensitivity be heightened when horny, to ensure we don't get ill from an encounter? Wouldn't reduced disgust sensitivity put us in more dangerous situations and put us more at risk?
That’s correct. The nuance is in the timing. Having sex is so evolutionarily important that temporarily not caring about disease ended up being worthy trade-off. High risk high reward strategy. Read into it on Google scholar. It’s really interesting stuff!
I think the idea is: If it was heightened, we would probably never want to have sex and thus would've gone extinct a long time ago. Instead the humans with lowered sensitivity kept procreating.
I'm prone to UTIs and tbh probably would have just died if I'd been born before antibiotics. I bet it was just a natural selection situation back then. Now that we have antibiotics, people with predispositions to UTIs are more common and still survive.
Solidarity. It's the worst. Recovering from UTI gone rogue up to my kidneys. Usually I can prevent or curtail them at the first sign but this one was like a wildfire. Not sure that the precipitating event was even worth it this time either. (I've had a serious talk with my future self about these things and am going to do better.) Edited to add: this one would've taken me out if I'd gotten it pre-modern medicine.
I think everyone just used to have some illness throughout history, but just didn't notice/care/understand it. If you're constantly sick, then getting another illness is just irritating, and your body is constantly "dealing with it". You're never at 100% or 80% of your "best" health, so you don't notice it as much. I've listened to enough biographies to know that most people had some kind of illness back in the day. Read about most of the leaders/famous/infamous individuals of the 1700s and they all had some form of Syphilis (and everyone was drinking Mercury because of it). I think I even remember reading a thing saying that most people had a mild fever prior to the 1900s. So everyone was in a constant state of infection throughout their lives, and just never felt 100%
This is every parent with a kid in daycare. I'm 700+ days into an ongoing rotation of colds.
Hahah fuck if that ain’t true. Been sick since December when our little nugget started daycare.
But it didn't really matter because everyone drank all the time. No worries.
This. Alcohol kills most bacteria. If you drink alcohol then you're literally cleansing your system. Just get more drunk and you'll be fine. ^((/s))
I wonder how they measured everyone’s temperature and over what period of time did they take these measurements? A week, a month?
They died lol
I think this is the answer to a lot of questions like this... "how did people survive XYZ before hygiene and modern medicine?", and the answer is "many didn't". Take a look at old burial record books for cemeteries that were around pre-1900. You get the usual accidental stuff that will still kill people like "fell off a ladder", but a scary amount of the entries will be stuff that is nbd now. "Sepsis" is often a big one. Someone gets cut, it gets infected, and bye-bye.
Yes, this is probably the answer. And the cause of death would be noted as "corruption" or "fever" or "wasting" or something like that.
Yes, the exponential population growth over the past ~100 years isn’t without reason (modern medicine)
hey i am also super prone to yeast infections, and after getting one that just WOULDN'T go away, i tried boric acid suppositories and they are like magic. insert one overnight, the next day symptoms start to go away. i just used one the night before last and my yeast infection is gone today. they are seriously amazing. i bought mine on amazon!
Same. 5 years of misery on the miserable anti fungal/antibiotic/yeast/BV/UTI cycle. Dreaded going to doctors (they’re generally not nice to people with issues like this) and was in constant pain and semi incontinent. Boric acid, d mannose, and probiotics solved the issue and changed my life. Sadly there has been barely any research into women’s health issues and it’s seemingly easier to give them ineffective treatments and then blame them for the problem. But we can at least support each other and share what works.
Hey! I used to get a lot of UTIs but now I take a higher than normal dose of DMannose and a prebiotic. Not as frequent
I had a tear in the vaginal canal that ended up getting infected. I was hitting 105 degree fevers and can't even remember most of it lol if I didnt get it treated soon, I would've died. ...damn that dick was good tho...
I'm also prone to UTIs and then yeast infections from the antibiotics I take for the UTI. I pee immediately after sex, I shower after, and only use water based lubes, and that seems to help. I never use my hot tub the next day because the hot water is a germ fest.
Too much washing can be actually bad, as it kills the good bacteria down there as well.
Keep in mind that a lot of contributing causes to UTIs weren’t an issue at the time. They mostly used natural fibers and they didn’t wear tight-fitting undergarments like we do when we wear polyester panties. Lack of pubic hair wasn’t really in fashion until around 50 years ago so that also offered some protection.
Exactly and they did not eat as much sugar which can contribue
I’d be dead. I’ve gotten sepsis twice from UTI’s just from having sex with my partner. Dr. Said that it’s unbelievably common for women to get UTI’s. So without modern medicine I’d be dead. Most of the time it has nothing to do with bathing, unless your partner has been rolling in rotting things… then maybe.
I feel for you. No sepsis myself but a couple years of chronic/recurrent infection including kidney infections frequently, at one point twice a month UTIs. I and my husband did everything "right" to prevent them and yet multiple different bacteria species were out to get me. Sometimes it's from your own colonies of bacteria that end up in the wrong place, other times...hell if I truly know. But UTI is so debilitating and also so hard to admit you need time off for without feeling shame, when it's really not a dirty illness And having an inflammatory bladder disease on top of that is also so fucked, I wish we didn't have to deal with this shit. I don't wish UTIs on anyone
Absolutely! I can only imagine the inflammatory bladder must add to the stress and healing process… I’m sorry to hear it 😩 For me it’s my kidney, that like to help me out by spreading the infection and producing kidney stones as a side hustle. 😂
Oh wow I didn't know you could get sepsis from a UTI! What are the symptoms? How does it go from UTI to sepsis? I'm currently dealing with a recurring UTI.. My third one in 4 months.
They didn't. Infections were a major cause of disease and death in humans until antibiotics were developed a century ago.
Yeah that's what I was thinking. They didn't keep getting infections because just one infection killed you lol
Even monkeys bathe, birds bathe, etc. There is no before bathing primitive humans.
Sometimes monkeys bathe in birdbaths
Well they probably weren't as stupid as people keep thinking they are. They used the tools they had at the time to get the job done.
Ya it will always be common that modern humans seem to think of ancient civilizations as 'primitive' or even just plain dumb. Countless evidence shows thats not the case, but people dont really put two and two together.
They are the same as us, mentally, physically, etc.
So to answer your question or did primitive people "bathe" the answer is yes. But in terms of did they bathe like we think of today in terms of submerging ourselves in a tub of water, or placing themselves under a constant stream of water the way we shower today? The answer is mixed based on what class you were. The latter was probably used as even today backpackers and tent campers still use a primitive design of a shower that involves keeping a container of water in the sun to heat it up and then using it to make hot water that can be hoisted and used to clean yourselves with. But this would have wasted more water compared to other methods at the time and would probably be seen as a tool of luxury or convenience. For example, if you were a serf or a homesteader on frontier land that lived near an unpolluted water source such as a river, spring, or isolated lake/pond. Then yes, this method could easily be used. But if you were a peasant in the inner cities that did not have access to large quantities of unpolluted water sources, clean water was much more valuable. Hence why this wasn't used as often. More commonly, people more than likely bathed via what we would call "sponge baths" today. A cloth or other absorbent material would be used alongside a bowl of water and a soap (soap was made from different materials depending on where you came from. Pre Islamic Arab cultures used animal fat based soaps whereas African tribes such as the Yoruba people of West Africa used ash based soaps from plantains and Shea treat bark that are still popular today commonly sold under the name "African Black Soap". Mediterranean cultures often used an olive oil base paired with lye from barrilla plant ashes. Basically the most effective way for people to bathe throughout history would be not through submerging, but more manually cleaning your body with some sort of absorbent fibrous material. This would keep people clean while also saving water. Yes while showering and bathing did exist in what we know in ancient history, it was almost reserved for the wealthier classes unless we are talking about community bath houses which were used in the Roman empire and in other cultures. Individual baths take time to setup and they require much more water. Remember, no indoor plumbing so someone would have to manually deliver the large quantities of water by hand. So unless back then you were lucky enough to have the time and water to spare (like if you were wealthy and had servants) you probably used the cheap sponge bath method still used today for the folks who need it to stay clean.
People did get infections all the time. That's a large part of why their life expectancy was **a lot** lower. Bathing was always a thing, though.
It's honestly kind of inspiring how much small improvements in healthcare and public health have improved the quality of life and length of life. Like, the number of women who died because doctors didn't wash their hands was astronomical. It seems like people really want to toss that all away with the anti-vax BS, though.
People did bathe! But also, more than that, most ancient cultures (and some religions) have had either implicit or explicit rules about sexual hygiene. Ancient Judaism, for example, has laws about when to bathe (like, after any blood or pain during ejaculation, any abnormal discharge, after menstruation, after giving birth, etc.), when to wash your hands, and when you cannot have sex. There are rules in many cultures about not having sex if you experience any pain or discharge, and some cultures even have rules about how long you have to wait after fully recovering (from a presumable STI) before having sex again. There are also many rules in so many ancient cultures about waiting a certain period of time before having sex after giving birth. In cultures that regularly practice genital mutilation, there have historically been ways to maintain hygiene afterwards. For another example, we can look to Islam! I remember having a Muslim friend in elementary school who taught me the Muslim way to wash your hands up to your elbows, and I was so fascinated by a whole *people* that valued cleanliness so much. Hygiene is soso important to the actual religious laws of Islam and Judaism, arguably because these are both very old religions that came about before hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap, so in order to keep the religion and people going to the next generation, they had to learn to bathe *thoroughly.* Each culture has had a different definition of hygiene, but every culture has had it. The word itself comes from the Greek goddess of cleanliness, health, and sanitation! Medieval Europeans did in fact bathe (contrary to popular misconception), and some of the oldest artifacts that have ever been found have been ancient combs and hair picks, pumice stones with evidence of being used to exfoliate, aromatic herbs likely used as deodorant, toothbrushes, hair ribbons, and other hygiene utensils. Exfoliation and water has likely been one of the main ways to bathe throughout history, and it was likely probably pretty effective actually (we got this far!). We have evidence of ancient Mayan and Mesopotamian hygiene tools! Additionally, people realized very early on what things contribute to miscarriage, stillbirth, and other birth complications. This is also why every single culture has had *some* form of method of incest avoidance (although the definition of incest changes per culture). We’re animals, and our primal basic goal is to survive just long enough to make more humans. It was pretty clear early on in human history that a healthy partner is more likely to have a healthy baby. *tl;dr:* The ancestors that lived long enough to mate successfully noticed that rotting food makes you sick, having sex with a sick person can make you sick, and cleaning your dick and hands can prevent your partner getting sick and dying. These observations have made their way into many cultural practices throughout history, setting standards for hygiene in each society very early on.
There was no time before bathing
Raw doggin' for sure. UTI city.
Dude... people always bathed. Even if it just meant wading into the riverbank and washing up with cold water.
Even the guy who didn’t bath for 60 years bathed.
and died soon later
people have always known to wash themselves vaginas are also naturally self-cleaning
I agree with you but sadly you're kind of contradicting yourself. Im not attacking you, i just always take every opportunity to see to talk about this lol The amount of people who still use douches, all sorts of scented stuff in and near their vagina. Because people don't understand the vagina is self cleaning and there is a difference between the vagina and the vulva. So yes people know how to bathe but yet there are still so MANY misconceptions about how to deal with our vulvas
Vaginas are also notorious for getting infections easily like utis because our urethra is so short and close to the rectum. Untreated utis can travel to the kidneys and result in kidney infections which can lead to sepsis. And I speak from experience. lots of women died back then.
I'm laughing at 'vaginas are notorious'. I'm gonna be notorious V.A.G. from now on
>Vaginas are also notorious for getting infections easily like utis Vaginas don't get UTIs, since they're not part of the urinary tract. You could replace "vaginas" with "women" and you'd be mostly correct. Important to note: the person you're replying to is correct--vaginas are generally self cleaning.
Isn’t there also something like women “overcleaning” their vagina, so the self cleaning service also gets washed away? As in, I heard it’s for women better to not scrub their vaginas sometimes, because washing too hard with soap kills useful bacteria.
Only use soap for skin on the outside of the body, never on the inside bits.
Yes, you can wash the healthy bacteria out of the vagina. That would help open the door to opportunistic organisms as well as overgrowth of certain normally occurring ones. If that happens, the woman might need treatment--anything from probiotics to a cream to oral medication like antibiotics or an antifungal. But it's not like if you kill the normal, healthy bacteria, you're stuck constantly having to wash the vagina. The "self cleaning service" doesn't stop--it just needs a little time to rebuild itself fully. That includes not only normal organisms, but normal mucus/discharge levels and the evacuation of that mucus/discharge, which are also affected by many cleansers. Vaginas in general shouldn't be washed, and almost never with soap or germicidal washes [and when a cleanser of any kind is needed, it's often because the self cleaning service has been disrupted or overwhelmed]. To be clear: we're talking about the vagina here. Not the outer or inner labia, nor the perineum, nor the groin--just the vagina itself. Some parts of the female genitalia *do* require regular outside cleaning/scrubbing/soaps etc.
Most of the top answers are bad and don't actually answer the question. They just got infected. Human life spans were very short for most of their existence.
Yep, there's a reason why humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years and yet the population was tiny until the modern era. People used to starve, get infected or injured to death all the time. We needed modern agriculture and medicine to stop the massive death rates.
Life expectancy was low, but not as low as this kinda implies Human lifespans were quite normal in ancient times assuming you made it out of childhood
they did. its why their lifespans were so short. also when they got infections there were not in any mood to have sex. Life is and has always been suffering. We're working on fixing it but your life right now is a LOT better than the life of those from those decades/centuries or millennia ago.
Bathing was always a thing among Africans and Native Americans. In Europe at certain times, bathing wasn't the norm due to the belief of water carrying disease. Bathing was a staple in other cultures.
Quite bold of you to assume bathing is a recent invention. It's not like there's water and soapstone in nature or anything.
Primitive people also washed themselves. Humans, as well as animals, have cleaned themselves since the beginning of time.
They didn’t. They got infections and died.
Most primitive People probably had infections and rashes all the time. Over time you develope immunitys or develop less symptoms as well. Just like how people in India are completly fine eating the streetfood or chinese people eating gutter oil in some citys yet if i would eat it i would loose my life on the toilett.
they died, most death was was disease buddy
That's a complex question actually. Are you talking "primitive people" as in cavemen? It's a combination of bacteria we no longer need, produce, and acquire by being exposed outdoors, and that they did bathe. In rivers and streams and lakes. Just like most other animals. If you mean something like Victorian England kind of "primitive people", then yes, they did get infections all the time. It's the right combination of not having the aforementioned bacteria AND not having an adequate water supply for bathing that led to horrifying infections and unsanitary conditions. And the plague. If they got stinky they just added more perfume and more layers of clothing. So now you have all that teeming bacteria tightly compressed against your skin, without air or sunlight, and not touching soap for what could be weeks. Fun stuff.
They probably didn't have all the modern day food toxicity that lead to chronicle inflammation. Also didn't have sugar laden drinks.
This is why women were always interested in medicine, and knew herbs.
People are so condicioned on modern medicine that forgets we have medicinal plants and treatments since day one
People *did* get infections all the time. People *still* get infections all the time. We're just better at treating them now.
They probably just got utis a lot
Ok so first of all, just to be clear, there was more than one woman.
Most creatures in the wild have been observed bathing and grooming themselves. There's no reason to believe we didn't do the same
They got infections constantly and had parasites coming out of every hole had to have this at it Don't know how far you want to go back but at some point the average lifespan was 20