This is a shitty post. Really, because it is about the first flushing toilet, which is one of my favorite human inventions ever and one which should never be taken for granted. You see here the “Queen’s Palace” of the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete (@2000 BCE). The top photo is a very renovated section of the Megaron, or central area, and within the palace precinct shown in the bottom photo is the first known flushing toilet, dating from about 1700 BCE.
The enormous palace of Knossos was constructed on a hill, making the sewage system operate easily in conjunction with gravity. The toilet was flushed by pouring water down the drain — not as fancy as our plumbing today, but leagues ahead of its time.
Today’s potties trace their ancestry through several British inventors — a courtier of Queen Elizabeth the First called John Harington invented one for her majesty. But the poop pipe just went straight down, and so the smell went straight up: unpleasant. Alexander Cummings introduced the S-bend to solve the maloderous problem with his patented flush toilet of 1775. And the man with the notable name of Thomas Crapper popularized his toilets around England and beyond (he did the U-bend in 1880). When we say something is Crappy, maybe we misuse the adjective. Instead of thinking of the shitty, we should perhaps be thinking grateful thoughts for the fact that we don’t have to smell feces all day (or be infected by the waste!) — presuming we have access to a flushing toilet.
Source(s): _Journal of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene for Development_, “History of sanitation and hygiene technologies in the Hellenic world,” (2) Feb 14, 2017, p. 163-180, by Stavros Yannopoulos et al. @toiletpaperhistory.net, “Toilet history – toilets in the Ancient World and today.” Image of toilet UNC Department of Classics.
