Hello everyone! It's been a while since our last blog post. Today we'll be going over when was soap first made. In my mind, it's definitely a fascinating subject... I mean really, I do really find a whole array of things fascinating, and that keeps growing everyday. However, today we'll just be talking about when was soap first made. It must have been quite the discovery and scientific process now that I think of it. Along with going over when soap was invented, we will also be going over how soap was invented. Lastly, we'll briefly describe the process of how soap was made throughout different periods of time in history. All of this, of course, with the malicious intent of getting you to purchase one of our incredible hand made natural soap bars! Or... at least do me the favor and check out our natural bar of soap collection.
When Soap Was Invented...
When soap was invented, the world was a very dark place. The first occurrences of soap as we know it today (to wash bacteria off of our humanly bodies, in this case treating scrofulous sores) dates back to the time of the Gauls, Romans, Germanic people, and a man known as Gaius Plinius Secundus
Gaius, wrote a book called Historia Naturalis. This account dates back to the 1st century AD.
Indeed... when soap was invented, the world was a veery dark place. Around this time, mass crucifixions were being carried out by the Roman Empire like hot cakes at my mother's Saturday breakfast club (just kidding, this is not an actual thing, but let me brighten up this paragraph).
Why do I refer to this darkness anyhow?... Well, that's because when soap was invented, the world was indeed a dark place, after all, how bright could the world possibly be without soap? All the grime and dirty-ness. I can't even begin to imagine what it would have been like to spend a day in a crowded city without washing your hands. Imagine how many germs and bacteria there would have been carried on from person to person... on your hands. So yes, I don't know if it's as dark as mass crucifixions, because what is the cause for events like the bubonic plague? That's right... bacteria. Not having soap is quite dark... and let's not forget running water, that would have been necessary also, because if you were far away from a body of water like a river or lake, soap would have been of no use.
Historia Naturalis - Earliest Account of "Soap" as we know it
The earliest account of soap being used as we know it today is Historia Naturalis. The book talks about when soap was invented in the 1st century AD and used by the Gauls. The Gauls were Celtic people, who used their soap to redden their hair. In the account, Gaius Plinius also speaks about the use of soap to treat scrofulous sores, another disgusting type of skin infection that was amid when soap was invented.
From there on, soap making took off in the 2nd a 3rd centuries, giving way for soapmaking methods that included lye. It was during the Islamic Golden Age (current 8th Century) however that soapmaking became a standard industry, however, this goes far off from when soap was invented, so we'll leave it off here for the perfect segway into how soap was invented.
How Soap was Invented...
Now that we know about the earliest account of soap as know it today, let's see how soap was invented. How soap was invented must be a question in every soapers' mind, and I doubt you'd care about soap if you were making soap and never bothered looking this up or learning about it. Soap was invented during the process of perfume making. Soap forms when foam becomes visible, and this was an occurrence that was witnessed during the process of making perfumes. As experiments cited by Sally Pointer in An Experimental Exploration of the Earliest Soapmaking show; "laundering of materials used in perfume - making lead to noticeable amounts of soap forming." There are highly possible occurrences of this phenomena in the article. These occurrences lead to the conclusion that it's highly plausible that soap making stemmed from the perfume industry. As worded by Sally Pointer, perfume makers "were straining relatively small quantities of aromatic oils and fats through woven cloth." After reading this, it makes sense as to the most possible manner on how soap was invented.
Later on during the 8th century, soapmaking became a standard industry. By then soapmaking consisted of using olive oil, akali, lime, fatty oils, and fat. [4]
How Soap was made...
So now that we have discussed when and how was soap was invented, let's cover some basic ways in which was actually made. By this I mean, the processes and methods used, as in the previous section we mainly covered the materials used and how it came to be that such materials made soap. Let's start from the earliest time period we covered which spoke about the 1st Century AD and move up until the 3rd century. I think that's a fair amount of time elapsed to see how soap was made in each century.
For soap to have formed in 1st century AD, materials such as fats and alkali would have to have combined and reacted to undergo saponification. We can find references to this in a book written by Partington in 1999. [2]
In this book, it is noted that Galen cited a man named Asklepiades Junior. Asklepiades Junior here mentions that soap is "made from the fat of oxen, goats, or wethers, and causticised lye."
This is around the same time when Historia Naturalis points out that soap was made from tallow (animal fat) and ashes. As far as the process goes into making the soap however beats me, as I was not able to find anything regarding the mixture ratios and what else the fat and ashes was mixed with. If you feel like taking a look yourself, here is the entire translation of the book Historia Naturalis. Please do inform me if you find it! By the way I tried searching up "scrofulous sores" in the search bar and it didn't work. Only one mention of scrofulous sores came up and it didn't have to do with soap.
During the 2nd century, Galen was describing how to make soap with lye and actually described it as a mean to wash oneself as opposed to Historia Naturalis which mentions the use of the soap solely to treat scrofulous sores. We can find deeper references to his quotes thanks to the work done by by authors like Roger Pearse. In this research article titled "Galen on the origins of soap", Roger investigates the origin of a phrase he ran into while reading the same Wikipedia page I quoted above. The phrase, as found by Roger, was "Soap is made from ox, goat or sheep’s tallow, and lye with lime; the best we think is the German [soap]; for it is the purest and almost the fattest, then the Gallic [soap]". Thanks to the research done by Roger, we can now pinpoint that this quote comes from the Latin book by "Johann Beckmann, A history of inventions and discoveries, tr. by W. Johnston. Vol. 1-3; 4, 2nd ed, vol. 3, London: Longman &c, 1817". I highly recommend reading the research article "Galen on the origins of soap" by Roger in order to understand how soap was made during the 2nd century!
In the 3rd century, Zosimos of Panopolis mentions soap making. Zosimos was an alchemist and made references to the word soap and soap-making in book full of alchemy recipes. This claim that first appears on the WikiPedia article written on soap, is also further researched by Roger Pearse. The claim that Zosimos uses the word soap can be further confirmed by Roger's work in this research article. The phrase comes up in a book full of alchemy recipes. Roger links to a book by Marcellin Berthelot pubslihed in 1888. The book is in French and titled "Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs". Here you'll be able to find Zosimos alchemy recipes which includes multiple references to the word "soap".
Anyhow, I hope you were able to find this article useful and helpful. If you are curious to know more about when was soap first made, how soap was invented, and how was soap made during the 1st through 3rd centuries AD, this will definitely give you a better a idea of where to start looking.
[1]"The history of soapmaking". The history of soapmaking. Archived from the original on 2022-08-12. Retrieved 2022-08-21.
[2] Partington, James Riddick; Hall, Bert S (1999). A History of Greek Fire and Gun Powder. JHU Press. p. 307. ISBN 978-0-8018-5954-0
Don't forget to support out local brand by buying your very own handmade natural bar of soap from our online collection!
I will leave you off with this YouTube Video which talks about the history of soap little! you will see that the video points out to the earlier making of "soap" during 2800 BC, however as you will read more, you will find that this method of soap making was what was referenced to as "proto-soaps" which as really just "soap-like" materials that didn't foam. You can read more about that in the references from the Wiki article.
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