628
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] DavidGarcia@feddit.nl 9 points 11 months ago

it's melted animal fat + leeched wood ashes (lye)

[-] ivanafterall@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago
[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It's almost inevitable to discover once we started using fire to cook. The fat would drip into the ashes of the fires. Over time, and with a bit of rain they would have discovered some pretty crude soap. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that hunter-gatherer societies routinely gathered the soap from the previous year they had been there in any given area.

They probably thought it was magic, because why the heck would fat and ashes cause that, but it's a neat little double soluble molecule.

[-] ivanafterall@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago

I certainly wouldn't have thought to rub it all over my body.

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

They didn't either. Bathing regularly seems to be a fairly modern concept for us, but we have found evidence that they used it to wash food containers, furs, and clothing.

[-] DessertStorms@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago

I didn't mean the soap was just fat, but that the fat in it was just from animals.

this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
628 points (98.3% liked)

Funny

6808 readers
348 users here now

General rules:

Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS