The Dirty Truth: A Brief History of Soap
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From ashes and animal fat to charcoal grit and essential oil powerhouses.
Soap’s been around longer than deodorant, hot showers, and whatever chemical goo you’re still pretending is “body wash.” But it didn’t start pretty. And it sure as hell wasn’t made with pink swirls.
Let’s dig into the filthy origins of how humans figured out how to stop smelling like death.
🏺 2800 BC: The First Soap Hack
The earliest evidence of soap? Babylonians mixing animal fat, wood ash, and water.
Not exactly a spa day, but hey—it got the grime off. This early “soap” was probably used more for laundry than for bodies.
🧴 Ancient Egypt: Smell Good, Die Young
The Egyptians kicked things up with scented oils and basic soap blends. They believed staying clean was key to health and spirituality—which honestly still tracks.
They also used a lot of natron (salt & ash) to cleanse… and to embalm. So, there’s that.
🛡️ Rome: Baths, Babes, and Bacteria
Romans loved their baths—but fun fact: they didn’t use soap much.
They scraped dirt off with a strigil (a glorified metal spatula) and rubbed on olive oil. Fancy? Sure. Effective? Not really.
Soap finally caught on in the 1st century AD, thanks to the Gauls and Germans—tribes who mixed animal fat and ash to make real, sudsy bars. Barbarians? Maybe. But clean ones.
⚖️ The Dark Ages: Dirt is Holy
Here’s where things get gross.
In Medieval Europe, soap went out of fashion. Why? Because some church folks decided bathing = vanity.
So people stopped washing.
And then came the plague.
Go figure.
💡 1800s–1900s: Soap Goes Commercial
Enter the industrial revolution.
Mass production made soap cheap—but also full of synthetics, detergents, and artificial scents.
Soap lost its soul.
It became a product, not a ritual.
🔥 Now: The Comeback of the Bar
Today, handmade bar soap is back with a vengeance.
People are waking up to:
- What’s in their soap
- What it’s doing to their skin
- And how much plastic they’re wasting with liquid crap
Stench Soap Co. is part of that comeback. We’ve taken it back to the roots—natural ingredients, rough bars, strong scents, and zero BS.
Clean has always been part of survival.
Now it’s part of the rebellion.