The scary part was the communal sponge
this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
213 points (95.3% liked)
Today I Learned
22192 readers
533 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
old timey shit-together
my family's old farmhouse has communal outhouses. this was the norm until like 150-200 years ago, and was still common here into the early 1900s.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Faustinus: Corn for dinner last night, Octavius?
Octavious: No, what's corn?
Marius: might want to see a doctor or a spiritual medium about that
When you think about it, this is what we do too today... Says I while I sit on the loo...
Our diets have changed, so the sponge has been replaced with the poop knife.
The great equalizer
still an upgrade from getting swifty
Hey, does my poop look right to you?
Me using this in Roman times.
Roman 1: Is that poor guy dying?
Roman 2: No that's just him every morning.
Roman’s had a lot of fiber in their diet from eating a lot of grains.
You misunderstand. I don't have an issue with things not moving enough. Mine is moving too much.
Fiber helps with that as well.
My problems are beyond your fiber's skills or magic. I was born with IBS and I will die with it.
True. If your gut has decided that its purpose is to hate you and everything you eat, then no amount of fiber will convince it otherwise.
IBS isn't always lifelong though. I hope you can work out a diet that avoids angering the growling intenstinal gremlins.
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
And shared a sponge stick to wash their ass.
Current research doesn't support that.
Most likely, the sponge sticks were used as a toilet brush, and pieces of cloth were used to wipe.
Cloth was not easy to make and what would they do with it?
you repurpose old fabric. same as with rags. as for what they'd do with it: likely wash and reuse them. same as with cloth diapers nowadays.
the alternatives would be leaves from certain plants or water and a hand.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Good to know, i had a hard time anyway believing that humans of any societal development stage would literally share a feces encrusted rag on a stick, to clean themselves. Certainly would be less nasty to just get up and leave without wiping at all.
They had running water there. My guess would be it was a rinse and share situation
load more comments
(5 replies)
Where's the fun in that?
Also "without privacy" is also in question, because you could use cloth partitions hanging from a rod; something known to be used in stadiums to separate class.
Uh, it seems I haven't kept up to date on butt wipe history.
Afaik there's an original source that makes fun of a guy who hung out on the toilet all day, hoping to strike up a conversation that'll get him invited to dinner.
That would imply it was a social thing.
You can do that in a stall. My proof that there were no curtains would be the temptation to wipe an ass on them. My guess is most people wore enough robes to cover up their stuff while sitting
It would imply that guy thought it was a social thing. Y'never know, maybe he was a weirdo even then. He could've been the proto-creeper whose descendants haunt public restrooms to this day.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
mistakes were made