The idea of soap was first recgonized from ancient Babylon. (This is about 2800 B.C. for those of you who aren't historians) Archiologists found inscriptions on columns that told them fats were burned with ashes. (This is a form of making soap) Many years down the line (we 're now at about 1500 B.C.), records show that early Egyptians combined animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts which created a soapy substance that could not only clean, but could also cure and treat skin diseases.
Ancient Greeks are known for their lavish baths however, to much surprise, have not been known to use soap. They cleaned themseleves with clay, sand, pumice stonces, and ashes, then lathered on oil creating the soapy substance we're used to today. Using an instrument known as a strigil, they scraped off the oil and dirt. They washed their clothes in running water without soap.
The word soap comes from an ancient Roman legend, from Mount Sapo, infamous for its animal sacrifice grounds. The animal fat and ashes that would mix into the soil in the Tiber River cleaned the clothes that the women were washing in the stream.Soon, the idea of cleaniness spread, and by 200 A.D. the famous Greek doctor Galen recommened soap not only for cleaning purposes but for medicinal also. (Now both the Egyptians and the Greeks were using soap for different purposes.)
Lets skip ahead about a thousand years and move over a few countries. Commerical soapmaking began in the thirteen colonies during the end of 1610. Soapmakers came on the second ship from England inorder to come to our state of Virginia.
In 1791 French chemist, Nicolas Leblanc patented a process for making "soda ash" (sodium carbonate from common salt). Soda ash is the alkali obtained from ashes that combine with fat to form soap. Then, in the mid-1800s, Belgian chemist Ernest Solvay invented the ammonia process, which included Leblanc's soda ash. The ammonia process made the soap less expenisive to produss. Because of the easiness to mass produce, soap was turned from a luxury to a neccessity.
Click here to see a timeline of detergents in America's 20th century
