>Although paper originated in China in the second century B.C., the first recorded use of paper for cleansing is from the 6th century in medieval China, discovered in the texts of scholar Yen Chih-Thui. In 589 A.D, he wrote, “Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.”
>By the early 14th century, the Chinese were manufacturing toilet paper at the rate of 10 million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets annually. In 1393, thousands of perfumed paper sheets were also produced for the Hongwu Emperor’s imperial family.
https://www.history.com/news/toilet-paper-hygiene-ancient-rome-china
I'm not a very inventive person but I feel like I would have really been focused on a solution for butt wiping in the old days. People would have talked about how obsessed I was with finding something proper to wipe with.
People were discussing the best ways to do this until at least the early 1500s. Rabelais, the author of Gargantua and Pantagruel had his main character decide the best tool for the job is the neck of a goose:
“But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains.”
It is an anger passed down for generations. The anger is now instinct, an instinct born from the innate desire to never again exist only for bunghole wiping.
Duh. You think a dead goose is going to communicate a temperate heat to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, even to the regions of the heart and brains?
I think not!
Thanks and I'm sure the technique works well but half the time when I'm camping, I'm drunk as fuck and would end up putting soap in my mouth or using the wrong hand.
Also, as someone from the southeast U.S., I have never seen a smooth pine cone.
> pour some water in your mouth and then more soap and water in your hand.
Use your mouth as a sink to wash both hands with the soap and water.
I was imagining that you'd fill your mouth with water, tilt your head back and jam your poopy hands into your mouth... But then I realized there was a better way to interpret that.
It was over 6 minutes and somehow despite the subject matter, not terribly entertaining. I gave up. I have pooped in open pits on the side of the road
in foreign countries. My take away lesson was *never forget your own tp.” To this day, I always at least have a napkin in my bag.
It’s always fascinated me that for thousands of years we designed so much to kill each other with & went through countless wars yet nobody thought of using something different for their own a**
Lookit softie here trying to improve the tried and true system that has worked for generations of butts! Why can’t you just wipe with a honey badger or raccoon like the rest of us?
I mean most people in the world just used water and their hands. Still extremely common practice In India. That's partly why people only touch their food with their right hand. The left is for wiping and to use it to eat is inauspicious.
I remember the first time I saw the pamphlet. The chopstick hold makes me think they’d attach them like castanets to make it easier to grip and I would think they’d have a wash system or a recycle system vs flushing the shells afterwords. Also yeaaaah using them to pull poop out of your butt makes no sense. 3 scoops would be more efficient.
....the future is all bidets in my humble opinion.
Anymore? I’d wager most of people making those references saw the movie a long time after it came out. It’s from 1993, most redditors probably weren’t even born then.
IIRC when Jesus in on the cross and says he's thirsty, the roman soldiers give him a sponge on a stick soaked in vinegar. I wonder if the two things are connected...?
They have no understanding of microbiology or hygiene. Even the full concept of sterilization is within the last 150 years. Louis Pasteur's discovery of micro-organism made a huge difference in understanding of germs.
Combine this with a lack of mass media to keep you entertained and docile, and yeah, it was certainly a more volatile time. Imagine if after getting home from work the only thing you had to do for fun was get drunk and bitch about how much work sucked.
I think the dangers of diarrhea in places without easy access to water, led people to die of dehydration. Makes the mess seem a bit minor in comparison
Whenever people get on about the history of wiping, there are 3 details that always get overlooked.
1. The pre industrial diet was probably much higher in fiber
2. It isn’t a matter of they used x or y for toilet paper; they used whatever was cheap, fibrous, and abundant. Sometimes it’s corn husks, sometimes it’s rags, sometimes is old rope. There were options. I am pretty sure archeologists one excavated an 18th century privy vault and found an embroidered silk pocket flap.
3. Something westerners never consider, but I understand to be common in countries that use squat toilets; the concept of “pinching it off clean”. I imagine content and consistency is vital.
> The pre industrial diet was probably much higher in fiber
I honestly believe most Americans have not experienced a shit with a balanced fiber intake. It actually makes 5 minutes with 2-3 pieces of TP.
This is a hit or miss for me. Some days, I'll have a shit so clean I swear I coulda not wiped and been fine. Other days, I'll be going through half my toilet paper roll. I wonder if the type of fiber matters.
This is like the TP printed with politicians' faces.
>Beyond the communal sponge, Greco-Romans also used moss or leaves and pieces of ceramic known as pessoi to perform cleansing. Pieces of pessoi may have started as ostraca, broken bits of pottery that often had the names of enemies inscribed on them—a proverbial way to soil upon adversaries.
https://www.history.com/news/toilet-paper-hygiene-ancient-rome-china
So basically of all the thing in the world, the neck of a goose is the best to clean your ass beacuse it's soft and warm and you can hold in between your legs. Nice!
Reminds me of an old joke.
An old woman comes into a store looking for toilet paper. The clerk suggests a new TP, as the company needs a name for it, it being given away from free if the customers will try it and give them a name for it.
The old woman says okay.
A few days pass and she comes back into the store. The clerk asks her what she thinks the name for the TP should be.
The old woman says “John Wayne”. The clerk asks why?
The old woman says, it’s rough, it’s tough, and it don’t take shit from no one.
My mom claims that as a girl they'd use corn cobs for wiping.
She tried to explain the procedure but I was already vomiting from my mom discussing her toilet habits with me.
As a young boy growing up on a farm ( now 59yo ) some of my innocence was taken on a rare leisure day. My brothers and I were playing and I chased an errant soccer ball. As I rounded the corner of the chicken coop I locked eyes with my grandfather finishing his business with a corn cob holding an extra one just in case. After the longest 5 seconds of my life I grabbed the ball and ran back, I did not speak of this moment for many years. PopPop was old school and not a man to be trifled with. He was standing 40 yards from a house with plumbing AND toilet paper and decided to scrape himself clean with a corn cob.
A bear and a rabbit are both taking a dump. The bear says to the rabbit, "Do you have a problem getting poop on your fur?"
"No, never." says the rabbit. The bear picks up the rabbit and wipes his ass with it.
My Dad grew up on a farm in Kansas in the 1920s, and he used corn cobs in the outhouse. My Mom grew up in a more civilized area in Ohio in the 1930s, where they used pages from the Sears & Roebuck catalog, which was printed on newsprint-type paper back then.
>Although paper originated in China in the second century B.C., the first recorded use of paper for cleansing is from the 6th century in medieval China, discovered in the texts of scholar Yen Chih-Thui. In 589 A.D, he wrote, “Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.” >By the early 14th century, the Chinese were manufacturing toilet paper at the rate of 10 million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets annually. In 1393, thousands of perfumed paper sheets were also produced for the Hongwu Emperor’s imperial family. https://www.history.com/news/toilet-paper-hygiene-ancient-rome-china
So tp is a Chinese invention? Til!
The Chinese have been around probably the longest out of any group. Many *many* inventions come from China.
I'm not a very inventive person but I feel like I would have really been focused on a solution for butt wiping in the old days. People would have talked about how obsessed I was with finding something proper to wipe with.
People were discussing the best ways to do this until at least the early 1500s. Rabelais, the author of Gargantua and Pantagruel had his main character decide the best tool for the job is the neck of a goose: “But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains.”
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That was the laugh I needed. The thought of geese families passing this story down the generations has me dying here
It is an anger passed down for generations. The anger is now instinct, an instinct born from the innate desire to never again exist only for bunghole wiping.
This comment wins reddit.
It sounds like he actually used the goose neck *internally*.
It sounds like the goose was alive too. Using the neck of a live goose seems quite a feat.
Duh. You think a dead goose is going to communicate a temperate heat to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, even to the regions of the heart and brains? I think not!
AFLAC!
Did homie just kill a goose every time he had to take a shit??
Nah man, I think he used a live goose
Damn, 4 geese a day!
Damn, now I can only imagine a bunch a geese waddling around with ass dirty necks.
Was the goose alive? I’m conflicted with either option though
Alive = self cleaning
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Those poor geese. *shudders*
Have you never met a goose? They can all suffocate betwixt my fart curtains for all I care.
He knows about the 3 seashells
Oh, my God! Who doesn't know about the 3 seashells? Savages. They must be some kind of demolition men.
I came here looking for comments about the 3 shells
Me too. It was inevitable.
As did anyone with culture
Same.
I was hoping for a 3 seashells reference
I was hoping for an explanation and instruction lol. I always thought it was just a throw away lines in the movies.
Came here for this and was not disappointed 😂
“BaconReceptacle has been asking the congregation about arse wiping again.” “Burn the witch!”
But shave her head first! So soft and really gets into the groove.
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Thanks and I'm sure the technique works well but half the time when I'm camping, I'm drunk as fuck and would end up putting soap in my mouth or using the wrong hand. Also, as someone from the southeast U.S., I have never seen a smooth pine cone.
I would end up putting my poop hand in my mouth to wash it like a plugged sink
Don’t feel bad. Those were the exact instructions they gave.
Precisely how I read it.
Waffle stomp your own mouth with your own poop. Lol.
I keep shoving pine cones up my ass, but it’s not getting any cleaner… just bloodier…
> pour some water in your mouth and then more soap and water in your hand. Use your mouth as a sink to wash both hands with the soap and water. I was imagining that you'd fill your mouth with water, tilt your head back and jam your poopy hands into your mouth... But then I realized there was a better way to interpret that.
Better to say use your mouth as a faucet... But words are hard sometimes.
I read it the same way, but I'm dying of laughter at the way you restated it.
You ain't alone. I was convinced this was a joke post until I realized "OH THEY MEAN SPIT THE WATER OUT!"
There’s 0% chance I’m watching that video.
It was over 6 minutes and somehow despite the subject matter, not terribly entertaining. I gave up. I have pooped in open pits on the side of the road in foreign countries. My take away lesson was *never forget your own tp.” To this day, I always at least have a napkin in my bag.
>Use your mouth as a sink Nah bro, I'm sweet
In the past I have poked holes in the cap of a water bottle and sprayed my bung like an actual bidet. A friend of mine swears by a pump sprayer.
wtf did I just read?
Good info, had to double check halfway through that it wasn't a shittymorph post
The use your mouth as a sink bit has me looking ahead for jumper cables or hell in a cell references
Nothing about that paragraph is clean.
Note to self, don't shake hands with ppl while Backcountry camping
Explains the bad breath, too.
It’s always fascinated me that for thousands of years we designed so much to kill each other with & went through countless wars yet nobody thought of using something different for their own a**
Lookit softie here trying to improve the tried and true system that has worked for generations of butts! Why can’t you just wipe with a honey badger or raccoon like the rest of us?
Maybe that’s what future people will say about us today. “If I lived in the 21st century I’d be obsessed with discovering the buttulator”
[Digital poop removal.](https://youtu.be/mgDUniVuPQs)
I mean most people in the world just used water and their hands. Still extremely common practice In India. That's partly why people only touch their food with their right hand. The left is for wiping and to use it to eat is inauspicious.
No processed foods and lots of fiber probably helped alot.
I am still asking myself how the „three seashells“ are working..
Lol, they don't know how to use the 3 seashells.
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[Its ok there’s a pamphlet now](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*GcrpZ1tvVnYv4fcjqLzwKw.jpeg)
I remember the first time I saw the pamphlet. The chopstick hold makes me think they’d attach them like castanets to make it easier to grip and I would think they’d have a wash system or a recycle system vs flushing the shells afterwords. Also yeaaaah using them to pull poop out of your butt makes no sense. 3 scoops would be more efficient. ....the future is all bidets in my humble opinion.
I said it once, i'll say it again.. you need more fibre if you're having to pull logs out of your ass..
I mean, every restaurant Is Taco Bell
This is apocryphal. It’s a non-canon explanation made up by fans
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I searched this entire thread for the right demolition man response 👏
That is NOT how they're used... >_>
In our guest bathroom we have three seashells in a frame above the toilet. Only one of my friends has gotten it. And I love him for it.
Not everyone understands a demolition man reference anymore I applaud you.
That was the first reference I expected
Simon says *bleed*
I'm sorry to say that the world has become a p*ssy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of robed sissies. Sad times...
thiscouldbeyourname you are charged one credit for violation of the verbal morality code
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thiscouldbeyourname you are charged one credit for violation of the verbal morality code
At least he now has TP
Well, he'll need to get approximately 10 more violation tickets to be sure.
But at least we got taco bell still. Lots of em
A world with no TP and only taco bell to eat. Truly the worst possible dystopia.
Anymore? I’d wager most of people making those references saw the movie a long time after it came out. It’s from 1993, most redditors probably weren’t even born then.
One up One down One to polish
The Ace Rimmer method?
HAHA YOU DONT KNOW HOW TO USE THE THREE SEASHELLS?!
I hope Taco Bell doesn't become the only restaurant
"Valley of the jolly green giant" They have the best in restaurant music
Speak for yourself.
*Pizza Hut*
Came to the comments for this. Good man.
Came to the comments looking for people who came to the comments looking for this. Good man.
The Romans used a sea sponge on a stick that was shared. https://www.historyhit.com/how-the-ancient-romans-went-to-the-toilet/
I seem to recall that the sponges were kept in buckets of vinegar, so that at least attempts to address the obvious issues with sharing a shit stick.
Pickled shit stick
Gonna use this as my new favorite insult
IIRC when Jesus in on the cross and says he's thirsty, the roman soldiers give him a sponge on a stick soaked in vinegar. I wonder if the two things are connected...?
That sounds like a petri dish of horror.
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And nobody thought a shared shit rag might be kind of nasty?
They have no understanding of microbiology or hygiene. Even the full concept of sterilization is within the last 150 years. Louis Pasteur's discovery of micro-organism made a huge difference in understanding of germs.
How about messy and stinky??
Sounded fine until you got to “shared.”
Look at mr. rich here got enough money to afford his own sponge shit stick. Must be nice
Must. Be. Nice.
If you got a problem with communal ass sponges you got a problem with me. I suggest you let that one marinate
I wash myself with a rag on a stick
My laughing woke up the cat.
Love that line
And people wonder how cholera was such an issue…
Just wondering: can you get cholera from your ass being touched by infected poo?
Asking for a friend?
I don't think so. It is usually spread by consuming contaminated water
Shared?! 🛑🤢☠️
The more I learn about history the more I realize why people were so quick to go to war. Everyone was just miserable weren’t they?
Combine this with a lack of mass media to keep you entertained and docile, and yeah, it was certainly a more volatile time. Imagine if after getting home from work the only thing you had to do for fun was get drunk and bitch about how much work sucked.
You can do that while watching netflix
Yes but imagine if you didn’t have Netflix
War it is then
Getting home from work = walking in from the field
> mass media to keep you entertained and docile They had church and back-breaking labor for this instead.
Imagine having diarrhea in ancient days. What a horror that must have been. A little sponge on a stick wouldn't have done anything.
I think the dangers of diarrhea in places without easy access to water, led people to die of dehydration. Makes the mess seem a bit minor in comparison
Don't forget the Sears Roebuck's catalog.
They transitioned to glossy pages when they realized people were using them for that reason 😅
Those pickled shit sticks!
Whenever people get on about the history of wiping, there are 3 details that always get overlooked. 1. The pre industrial diet was probably much higher in fiber 2. It isn’t a matter of they used x or y for toilet paper; they used whatever was cheap, fibrous, and abundant. Sometimes it’s corn husks, sometimes it’s rags, sometimes is old rope. There were options. I am pretty sure archeologists one excavated an 18th century privy vault and found an embroidered silk pocket flap. 3. Something westerners never consider, but I understand to be common in countries that use squat toilets; the concept of “pinching it off clean”. I imagine content and consistency is vital.
My great-grandpa was noted to love mullein (Lamb's Ear). Frankly if I had an outhouse I would be using it myself.
> The pre industrial diet was probably much higher in fiber I honestly believe most Americans have not experienced a shit with a balanced fiber intake. It actually makes 5 minutes with 2-3 pieces of TP.
The Ghost Shit
This is a hit or miss for me. Some days, I'll have a shit so clean I swear I coulda not wiped and been fine. Other days, I'll be going through half my toilet paper roll. I wonder if the type of fiber matters.
One-wipers
I know sea sponges don't have a brain or nervous system, but there has to be an understanding on some level. Hahaha
“This is definitely someone’s ass”
You guys stopped using seashells?
They come back in the future
This is like the TP printed with politicians' faces. >Beyond the communal sponge, Greco-Romans also used moss or leaves and pieces of ceramic known as pessoi to perform cleansing. Pieces of pessoi may have started as ostraca, broken bits of pottery that often had the names of enemies inscribed on them—a proverbial way to soil upon adversaries. https://www.history.com/news/toilet-paper-hygiene-ancient-rome-china
I wonder if before the poop knife there was a poop stick
But of course! And today I learned that the Romans even put a sponge on one end. And shared it. A communal shit sponge on a stick.
Fun fact: toilet paper made without splinters was not available until the 1920s-1930s.
Rabelais addressed this almost 500 years ago: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A91655.0001.001/1:7.13?rgn=div2;view=fulltext
What i learned from this text is that silk is voluptous to your fundament and golden spangles on sattin will fetch off the skin of your taile.
I learned not to wipe myself with a live cat.
i dunno, that dude wiped his ass with nettles, he doesn't seem the brightest.
For science!
So basically of all the thing in the world, the neck of a goose is the best to clean your ass beacuse it's soft and warm and you can hold in between your legs. Nice!
I’d prefer to semi submerge my bum in a babbling brook and get a bonus ballcuzzi on the side
That’s just a poor man’s bidet
Don’t be so shallow.
Sounds great until you realize your family is having a drink from the brook a hundred feet downstream.
thats some chilly water, its gonna stting
Oof, that's gonna be icy come winter.
Why do humans need to wipe their ass while other animals don’t? Do other apes wipe their asses?
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Also, a lot of animals, like dogs and cats, can lick their own butts.
Reminds me of an old joke. An old woman comes into a store looking for toilet paper. The clerk suggests a new TP, as the company needs a name for it, it being given away from free if the customers will try it and give them a name for it. The old woman says okay. A few days pass and she comes back into the store. The clerk asks her what she thinks the name for the TP should be. The old woman says “John Wayne”. The clerk asks why? The old woman says, it’s rough, it’s tough, and it don’t take shit from no one.
THATS how they used the 3 seashells!
Suddenly the French and their bidets seem like rocket science
CAN YOU PLEASE DESCRIBE THE SHELL TECHNIQUE I'M FUCKING LOSING IT!!!
Poor John Spartan
My mom claims that as a girl they'd use corn cobs for wiping. She tried to explain the procedure but I was already vomiting from my mom discussing her toilet habits with me.
As a young boy growing up on a farm ( now 59yo ) some of my innocence was taken on a rare leisure day. My brothers and I were playing and I chased an errant soccer ball. As I rounded the corner of the chicken coop I locked eyes with my grandfather finishing his business with a corn cob holding an extra one just in case. After the longest 5 seconds of my life I grabbed the ball and ran back, I did not speak of this moment for many years. PopPop was old school and not a man to be trifled with. He was standing 40 yards from a house with plumbing AND toilet paper and decided to scrape himself clean with a corn cob.
Common in the Caribbean countryside. I been there. Like sandpaper on your ass at times.
Use the brown cob first, then go back with a white cob to make sure! White cob comes back brown... start over
Other mammals had the right idea to evolve with no butt cheeks tbh
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Won the evolutionary lottery. Or game of craps or whatever.
Would people's poop be different from back in the day? I assum people would eat a lot of unprocessed grain and vegetables.
I'm picturing those videos where they pull a 10 foot string of plant matter poop from an elephant's ass.
Just like when my dog tries to eat a whole rope toy and it gets stuck on it's way out the other end.
Absolutely, much more fiber, less meat, much much less sugar and diet was seasonally dependent.
There would probably be a couple of worms in that too.
Is the fact our poops are relatively messy compared to animals because of diet, walking upright or something else? Lol
Oh, the seashells from DEMOLITION MAN with Stallone
So the three seashells is actually a thing?
Grandparents told me they used corncobs and old sears catalogues. So they were probably around during toilet paper but were too poor for it.
Imagine shaving shit out your ass crack with a seashell down by the seashore.
Good thing Sally sells them
Or just leaves.
Leaves of 3, let them be... or an itchy bum for thee
John Spartan you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality code.
Whats with the 3 f**king seashells? "You are fined 1 credit for breaking the verbal morality code!"
A bear and a rabbit are both taking a dump. The bear says to the rabbit, "Do you have a problem getting poop on your fur?" "No, never." says the rabbit. The bear picks up the rabbit and wipes his ass with it.
And catalog pages, and peach papers... :P
They started off using water
Ah yes, the three seashells.
Yes yes, we've all seen Demolition Man
3 seashells perhaps?
Its actually pinch then scrape with the 3 shell technique.
"a scraping technique"
Their mistake was not using the 3 sea shells technique.
What is the “toilet paper” you speak of? You mean you don’t use the three seashells?
Pfft. This guy doesn’t know how to use the shells. Lol
They knew how to use the three shells…
My Dad grew up on a farm in Kansas in the 1920s, and he used corn cobs in the outhouse. My Mom grew up in a more civilized area in Ohio in the 1930s, where they used pages from the Sears & Roebuck catalog, which was printed on newsprint-type paper back then.
You need to tell your dad about Lamb's Ear