6 ms·

Bath-obsessed ancients (2016)

52 points by revolucien 3y ago

brudgers 3y ago
archive, https://archive.ph/Y1un4 https://archive.ph/Y1un4
- phyzome 3y ago
  I'm gonna need a captcha bypasser to access this site that does paywall-bypassing...
  - brnaftr361 3y ago
    Same here, been served a loop all week long.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    Wow, it’s actually just broken? I managed to attempt to solve two but got stuck in a look and then the third try the captcha renders off the screen.
    - phyzome 3y ago
      Perhaps it has decided that you're simply not allowed, and is trying to waste your time with fake captchas.
  - gunapologist99 3y ago
    their implementation is badly broken. Usually with google's recaptcha you get to a second screen, but I never even see that second screen on this site.
postmeta 3y ago
[flagged]
- greggsy 3y ago
  Describes a manga series on the topic, but adds little to the discussion
  - Groxx 3y ago
    +1 to this. The episode descriptions also don't seem to have much of anything to do with sanitation consequences of shared baths. Not that I expect deep analyses of the consequences of the protagonist's actions in an isekai, of course.
  - bigbacaloa 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      I think you got whooshed by the reply's joke
pseingatl 3y ago
[flagged]
- laserdancepony 3y ago
  Generalization par excellence. I‘ve been there and won’t concur with your assessment.
- lm28469 3y ago
  You've probably ever been in the middle east then...
- flextheruler 3y ago
  Isn’t the Burj Khalifa not even hooked up to the sewer system so all the feces and urine is loaded onto trucks daily? Also open air sewers are still common in a lot of places, an Iranian American friend of mine claimed he almost fell into one as a kid.
  - gsich 3y ago
    Fake news
    - Brybry 3y ago
      The Iranian American friend's story seems plausible if iranwire is reliable [1][2] Google translate from the mehr article suggests it's sewage, not just storm water. > Siavash Mahmoudi pointed out that municipal open streams are built with the purpose of disposing of surface water and rainfall, and continued: Currently, these open streams are used as sewage disposal networks; But it could be a bad translation. [1] https://iranwire.com/en/iran/70976/ https://iranwire.com/en/iran/70976/ [2] https://www.mehrnews.com/news/5374817/ https://www.mehrnews.com/news/5374817/
      - gsich 3y ago
        ah, should have clarified, meant the Kalifa.
joebiden2 3y ago
The wordy article boils down to: the baths were infested by bacteria and worms due to insufficient water cleaning. Interesting, but could be compressed to 2-3 paragraphs without losing any detail. Thanks for posting though.
- User3456335 3y ago
  Some other interesting things from the article that stuck with me: - Most toilets weren't connected to the sewers because they didn't want to have the smell of the sewers in their houses - The public latrines were considered a bad choice because of lack of privacy and shared spunges (based on texts on the walls) - The sewers were built mainly for the convenience of not having to transport water to and from within the city, not necessarily for hygiene reasons - Apparently some emperor did realize that it wasn't smart to bathe with sick and healthy people at the same time but decided the sick would bathe before the healthy Of course, if you only wanted to know if they cleaned the water in bath houses sufficiently, then your summary suffices as well.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    > Apparently some emperor did realize that it wasn't smart to bathe with sick and healthy people at the same time but decided the sick would bathe before the healthy Maybe he thought they were more in need of cleansing. Even with today's knowledge, without application of today's tech (overnight chlorination say) it wouldn't really make a difference? Today's first bathing session comes after yesterday's second.
    - thatcat 3y ago
      A simple bioactive sand filter would probably be sufficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosand_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosand_filter
      - OJFord 3y ago
        That too came a bit late: > proposed by Dr. David Manz in the late 1980s [...]
diego_moita 3y ago
Mary Beard, probably the most respect alive scholar on ancient Rome, already explained that in this excelent documentary about daily life on Pompeii: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSw7eoBbM0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSw7eoBbM0U She explains it at 20:51.
teruakohatu 3y ago
> A visit to the latrine was probably unpleasant and only for the desperate, according to archaeologist Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, author of The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy . She has looked into more Roman lavatories than most. Aside from the total lack of privacy, she notes, they were almost invariably dark, smelly and potentially dangerous. Noxious gases built up in the trench below and sometimes exploded, sending flames shooting up through the toilets. It can't be worse than festival toilets on day three, after two days of mud and rain. What we don't know is how often the toilets were cleaned which would have made a big difference or if insense was burnt. The Romans were into perfume in a big way.
- kmstout 3y ago
  I attended Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival several years. It's held in NY state for four or five days in July, with people on-site longer for setup and teardown. While I was there, I marveled at many things, e.g., the music, the friendliness of the people, and the cleanliness of the outhouses.
api 3y ago
So basically like day 3 of a music festival.
kragen 3y ago
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/parasitology/article/human-parasites-in-the-roman-world-health-consequences-of-conquering-an-empire/6464BDBB5D4B8EC0B08C503B6ECD1B7B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/parasitology/article... seems to be the actual paper this is blogspam for, and the article doesn't seem to have a paywall like new scientist does
hjrnunes 3y ago
This is a terrible article. To understand why, I refer everyone to the amazing Youtube channel of Isaac Moreno Gallo. https://www.youtube.com/@IsaacMorenoGallo https://www.youtube.com/@IsaacMorenoGallo There are several videos with English audio if you do not understand Spanish. Here's a representative sample: "The most ancient engineering told to the most modern engineers" https://youtu.be/pk4xa6Tzwvk https://youtu.be/pk4xa6Tzwvk "How the Romans screwed up and how those who interpret them screw up." https://youtu.be/uwZbHPmcO7M https://youtu.be/uwZbHPmcO7M "Roman Engineering 1 of 4" https://youtu.be/SdU6FSjdFag https://youtu.be/SdU6FSjdFag Isaac also created a TV programme about Roman Engineering for RTVE that you can find on YouTube. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX9K6BsUtIfJaMieISPGbsNLsIXB-RR-o https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX9K6BsUtIfJaMieISPGbsNLs... It's Spanish only AFAIK, but worth watching for the commissioned 3d renders of the different devices and techniques. TL;DR We need more engineer archeologists to avoid misinterpreting archeological evidence Isaac is a civil engineer for the Spanish government, and an amateur historian that focuses on Roman technology and civil engineering, particularly roads and hydraulics. There are a number of tropes and myths about Roman technology that stem from the fact that archeologists are very unlikely to have an engineering background and thus lack the knowledge to correctly interpret some of what they uncover. As Isaac explains and shows in his videos, Romans supplied their cities with fresh water from springs only, never from rivers, rain or any other still water. They possessed the topographical and geodesic knowledge required to map terrain precisely and route both roads and aqueducts for hundreds of miles with the necessary and adequate slope. Furthermore, they understood pressure and routinely siphoned water across significant elevation differences and their pipe engineering was able to handle several atmospheres. They always captured the entire stream and dumped the excess flow directly into the sewers which were kept clean with running water. There is evidence of several of these distribution points in different cities. With all of this in mind, I'm skeptical of the dating precision of the sites. I find it suspicious that there is absolutely no difference between health in the Imperial heyday and health in late-empire times when maintenance was deficient and water supply irregular and thus no permanent running water in the sewers, thus rats, thus diseases. I would guess the samples are actually of the same times or at least from places with deficient sanitation for whatever reason. Some other article tropes he specifically addresses are: - lack of toilet privacy: they likely built stalls in wood like we do now; they just did not last - the shared sponges: these were likely for dislodging stuck material and cleaning the toilet, not the body; again, just like we do nowadays Isaac also created/maintains two websites: http://www.traianvs.net/index.php http://www.traianvs.net/index.php - the scholar version of his channel with articles and papers https://www.viasromanas.net https://www.viasromanas.net - a GIS-based site to map, identify and promote Roman roads in the Spanish region of Castilla y León

52 points by revolucien 3y ago

brudgers 3y ago

archive, https://archive.ph/Y1un4 https://archive.ph/Y1un4

phyzome 3y ago
I'm gonna need a captcha bypasser to access this site that does paywall-bypassing...
- brnaftr361 3y ago
  Same here, been served a loop all week long.
- mulmen 3y ago
  Wow, it’s actually just broken? I managed to attempt to solve two but got stuck in a look and then the third try the captcha renders off the screen.
  - phyzome 3y ago
    Perhaps it has decided that you're simply not allowed, and is trying to waste your time with fake captchas.
- gunapologist99 3y ago
  their implementation is badly broken. Usually with google's recaptcha you get to a second screen, but I never even see that second screen on this site.

postmeta 3y ago

[flagged]

greggsy 3y ago
Describes a manga series on the topic, but adds little to the discussion
- Groxx 3y ago
  +1 to this. The episode descriptions also don't seem to have much of anything to do with sanitation consequences of shared baths. Not that I expect deep analyses of the consequences of the protagonist's actions in an isekai, of course.
- bigbacaloa 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    I think you got whooshed by the reply's joke

pseingatl 3y ago

[flagged]

laserdancepony 3y ago
Generalization par excellence. I‘ve been there and won’t concur with your assessment.
lm28469 3y ago
You've probably ever been in the middle east then...
flextheruler 3y ago
Isn’t the Burj Khalifa not even hooked up to the sewer system so all the feces and urine is loaded onto trucks daily? Also open air sewers are still common in a lot of places, an Iranian American friend of mine claimed he almost fell into one as a kid.
- gsich 3y ago
  Fake news
  - Brybry 3y ago
    The Iranian American friend's story seems plausible if iranwire is reliable [1][2] Google translate from the mehr article suggests it's sewage, not just storm water. > Siavash Mahmoudi pointed out that municipal open streams are built with the purpose of disposing of surface water and rainfall, and continued: Currently, these open streams are used as sewage disposal networks; But it could be a bad translation. [1] https://iranwire.com/en/iran/70976/ https://iranwire.com/en/iran/70976/ [2] https://www.mehrnews.com/news/5374817/ https://www.mehrnews.com/news/5374817/
    - gsich 3y ago
      ah, should have clarified, meant the Kalifa.

joebiden2 3y ago

The wordy article boils down to: the baths were infested by bacteria and worms due to insufficient water cleaning. Interesting, but could be compressed to 2-3 paragraphs without losing any detail. Thanks for posting though.

User3456335 3y ago
Some other interesting things from the article that stuck with me: - Most toilets weren't connected to the sewers because they didn't want to have the smell of the sewers in their houses - The public latrines were considered a bad choice because of lack of privacy and shared spunges (based on texts on the walls) - The sewers were built mainly for the convenience of not having to transport water to and from within the city, not necessarily for hygiene reasons - Apparently some emperor did realize that it wasn't smart to bathe with sick and healthy people at the same time but decided the sick would bathe before the healthy Of course, if you only wanted to know if they cleaned the water in bath houses sufficiently, then your summary suffices as well.
- OJFord 3y ago
  > Apparently some emperor did realize that it wasn't smart to bathe with sick and healthy people at the same time but decided the sick would bathe before the healthy Maybe he thought they were more in need of cleansing. Even with today's knowledge, without application of today's tech (overnight chlorination say) it wouldn't really make a difference? Today's first bathing session comes after yesterday's second.
  - thatcat 3y ago
    A simple bioactive sand filter would probably be sufficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosand_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosand_filter
    - OJFord 3y ago
      That too came a bit late: > proposed by Dr. David Manz in the late 1980s [...]

diego_moita 3y ago

Mary Beard, probably the most respect alive scholar on ancient Rome, already explained that in this excelent documentary about daily life on Pompeii: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSw7eoBbM0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSw7eoBbM0U She explains it at 20:51.

teruakohatu 3y ago

> A visit to the latrine was probably unpleasant and only for the desperate, according to archaeologist Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, author of The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy . She has looked into more Roman lavatories than most. Aside from the total lack of privacy, she notes, they were almost invariably dark, smelly and potentially dangerous. Noxious gases built up in the trench below and sometimes exploded, sending flames shooting up through the toilets. It can't be worse than festival toilets on day three, after two days of mud and rain. What we don't know is how often the toilets were cleaned which would have made a big difference or if insense was burnt. The Romans were into perfume in a big way.

kmstout 3y ago
I attended Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival several years. It's held in NY state for four or five days in July, with people on-site longer for setup and teardown. While I was there, I marveled at many things, e.g., the music, the friendliness of the people, and the cleanliness of the outhouses.

api 3y ago

So basically like day 3 of a music festival.

kragen 3y ago

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/parasitology/article/human-parasites-in-the-roman-world-health-consequences-of-conquering-an-empire/6464BDBB5D4B8EC0B08C503B6ECD1B7B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/parasitology/article... seems to be the actual paper this is blogspam for, and the article doesn't seem to have a paywall like new scientist does

hjrnunes 3y ago

This is a terrible article. To understand why, I refer everyone to the amazing Youtube channel of Isaac Moreno Gallo. https://www.youtube.com/@IsaacMorenoGallo https://www.youtube.com/@IsaacMorenoGallo There are several videos with English audio if you do not understand Spanish. Here's a representative sample: "The most ancient engineering told to the most modern engineers" https://youtu.be/pk4xa6Tzwvk https://youtu.be/pk4xa6Tzwvk "How the Romans screwed up and how those who interpret them screw up." https://youtu.be/uwZbHPmcO7M https://youtu.be/uwZbHPmcO7M "Roman Engineering 1 of 4" https://youtu.be/SdU6FSjdFag https://youtu.be/SdU6FSjdFag Isaac also created a TV programme about Roman Engineering for RTVE that you can find on YouTube. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX9K6BsUtIfJaMieISPGbsNLsIXB-RR-o https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX9K6BsUtIfJaMieISPGbsNLs... It's Spanish only AFAIK, but worth watching for the commissioned 3d renders of the different devices and techniques. TL;DR We need more engineer archeologists to avoid misinterpreting archeological evidence Isaac is a civil engineer for the Spanish government, and an amateur historian that focuses on Roman technology and civil engineering, particularly roads and hydraulics. There are a number of tropes and myths about Roman technology that stem from the fact that archeologists are very unlikely to have an engineering background and thus lack the knowledge to correctly interpret some of what they uncover. As Isaac explains and shows in his videos, Romans supplied their cities with fresh water from springs only, never from rivers, rain or any other still water. They possessed the topographical and geodesic knowledge required to map terrain precisely and route both roads and aqueducts for hundreds of miles with the necessary and adequate slope. Furthermore, they understood pressure and routinely siphoned water across significant elevation differences and their pipe engineering was able to handle several atmospheres. They always captured the entire stream and dumped the excess flow directly into the sewers which were kept clean with running water. There is evidence of several of these distribution points in different cities. With all of this in mind, I'm skeptical of the dating precision of the sites. I find it suspicious that there is absolutely no difference between health in the Imperial heyday and health in late-empire times when maintenance was deficient and water supply irregular and thus no permanent running water in the sewers, thus rats, thus diseases. I would guess the samples are actually of the same times or at least from places with deficient sanitation for whatever reason. Some other article tropes he specifically addresses are: - lack of toilet privacy: they likely built stalls in wood like we do now; they just did not last - the shared sponges: these were likely for dislodging stuck material and cleaning the toilet, not the body; again, just like we do nowadays Isaac also created/maintains two websites: http://www.traianvs.net/index.php http://www.traianvs.net/index.php - the scholar version of his channel with articles and papers https://www.viasromanas.net https://www.viasromanas.net - a GIS-based site to map, identify and promote Roman roads in the Spanish region of Castilla y León