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Maybe Roman toilets are overrated, but 2000 years later, countries like India still don't have them.
by mariusz79 11y ago
Maybe Roman toilets are overrated, but 2000 years later, countries like India still don't have them.
- programmernews3 11y agoI came to say the exact same thing. There is also no sub-Saharan civilization that had figured out basic sanitation/sewers, even into the 21st century for some places.
- yareally 11y agoIndia was the birthplace of plumbing, though the Romans perfected it. Standardized earthen plumbing pipes with broad flanges making use of asphalt for preventing leakages appeared in the urban settlements of the Indus Valley Civilization by 2700 B.C.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_water_supply_and_sanitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_water_supply_and_sa...
- danbruc 11y agoI am not in the position to judge the situation in India but invention does not necessarily imply widespread adoption. Or adoption may change over time, for example by not keep up with population growth.
- tzs 11y agoTo put some numbers on this, about 600 million Indians rely on open defecation. Some researchers think that this is a key to the "Asian enigma"--the problem of why Indian children are shorter on average than African children even though African children are on average poorer (which normally correlates well with height). Researchers have found that open defecation leads to stunted growth, and also higher child mortality rates. The later could explain another puzzle of India--why Hindu children have higher mortality rates than Muslim children, even though Hindus are on average richer and more educated. It turns out that Indian Muslims are about 20 percent more likely to use toilets than Indian Hindus, regardless of income level. Here's an article on this: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/06/open-defecation-solves-the-child-mortality-puzzle-among-indian-muslims/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/06/open-defecation-solve... Here's a research paper on the connection between open defecation and stunted growth: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0073784 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
- srean 11y agoWhich is really ironic because flush toilets were normal in Indus valley civilization. That would be 2500 BC or another 500 years earlier. Centuries ahead of its time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley...