When pee and poo were everyday (s)tools
In the age of smart toilets, flushable wipes, and sparkling bathroom tiles, it’s easy to forget that poop and pee weren’t always treated as waste to be hidden or flushed away. In fact, for most of human history, excrement was a resource—used in everything from medicine and magic to cleaning and warfare. Ancient civilizations across the globe found practical (and sometimes bizarre) ways to incorporate human and animal waste into their daily lives.
Pee in the Ancient World
Far from being dismissed as waste, urine was once a special multipurpose liquid because it contains ammonia, a powerful cleaning agent, and urea, a nitrogen-rich compound. For ancient people, that meant pee had potential.
1. Roman laundry detergent
In ancient Rome, if your tunic stank, the solution was… more stink. Fullers (laundry workers) used human urine to wash clothes in large vats. They’d collect the urine, often from public urinals, and stomp the garments like grapes in a vat of wine. The ammonia helped break down grease and stains, acting as an early soap.
Roman Emperor Vespasian even imposed a urine tax, leading to the phrase pecunia non olet“—”money doesn’t stink.” Public urinals were called Vespasiani in his honor (or dishonor, depending on how you feel about pee-based tax policy).
2. Tooth whitening and mouthwash
Romans reportedly used Portuguese urine (valued for its strength) to whiten teeth. Urine contains ammonia, which can bleach enamel. The practice was common enough to be mocked in literature, but it persisted for centuries. Next time your dentist recommends whitening strips, just be grateful.
3. Leather tanning
In both ancient and medieval times, tanners used urine to treat animal hides. It softened the skin and helped remove hair before tanning. The process was smelly and laborious, often performed by outcasts or lower social classes, but essential to making leather goods.
4. Gunpowder production
During the Middle Ages and even earlier in China, saltpeter (potassium nitrate)—a key ingredient in gunpowder—was extracted from urine-soaked straw or dung heaps. Saltpeter naturally forms when nitrogen-rich substances decompose. Soldiers and alchemists would collect urine-soaked earth, leach it with water, and purify the crystals.
5. Agricultural fertilizer
Urine is packed with nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus—the holy trinity of plant nutrients. Ancient farmers knew this intuitively. In many pre-industrial societies, including China, Japan, and parts of Africa and Europe, urine was collected and stored for use as a liquid fertilizer. Some cultures even used “night soil”—a mix of urine and feces—to nourish crops.
Poop in Ancient practice
But there’s more. While modern sensibilities associate poop with filth, many ancient cultures saw poop as medicinal, magical, or materially useful.
1. Medicine from the rear
Believe it or not, ancient healers prescribed feces for a variety of ailments.
- In Ancient Egypt, dried or fermented dung from various animals (sometimes crocodile) was used in poultices and wound dressings.
- The Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BCE) includes recipes using donkey, gazelle, and even human excrement for various treatments.
- In Traditional Chinese Medicine, a remedy known as “yellow soup”—a fermented fecal suspension—was used to treat food poisoning or diarrhea. This may have been an early precursor to modern fecal microbiota transplants, now used to treat gut infections like C. difficile.
- Roman doctors occasionally prescribed animal dung to stop bleeding or aid childbirth.
Was it effective? In some cases, perhaps. Feces contain bacteria that, under the right conditions, could have probiotic effects. But it was more guesswork than science.
2. Cooking and heating with dung
In regions with little wood, dried animal (or human) dung became a valuable fuel source.
- In Mesopotamia, India, and Central Asia, dung cakes were shaped by hand and left to dry in the sun.
- These were then burned for cooking, heating, and even in religious ceremonies.
- Cow dung is still widely used in rural India and Nepal as a cooking fuel and is considered ritually pure.
Dung burns surprisingly well—it’s rich in undigested plant fibers and can maintain high heat with minimal smoke.
3. Building material
- In ancient Mesopotamia and parts of Africa, mud bricks were mixed with straw and dung.
- The dung helped bind the material and acted as a mild insect repellent.
- In medieval Europe and elsewhere, wattle and daub constructions used dung, clay, and straw to plaster walls.
These structures were surprisingly durable and sustainable.
4. Rituals and symbolism
In Vedic traditions of India, cow dung is sacred, symbolizing purity and fertility. It’s used to:
- Plaster floors and walls of homes and temples
- Disinfect altars
- Fuel holy fires
- Ward off evil spirits
This isn’t just symbolic—cow dung has mild antiseptic properties and repels insects.
In some African and Native American cultures, animal feces were used in initiation rites or spiritual ceremonies, representing a return to the earth or a connection with ancestral forces.
5. Divination from dung
It may sound like something out of satire, but copromancy—divination using feces—was reportedly practiced in some ancient cultures.
- Observers would analyze the color, shape, and texture of excrement to interpret omens or diagnose illness.
- In some cases, animal dung was burned, and the smoke patterns were read like tea leaves.
It’s not so different from other ancient divinatory practices, such as reading entrails (extispicy) or casting bones (astragalomancy).
Rethinking waste
What we discard today was once valued, not just for its utility, but for its connection to the body, the earth, and the cosmos. In many ancient cultures, nothing was wasted. Even our most reviled substances had a role to play in survival, healing, or ritual.
Modern science is beginning to catch up:
- Urine-based fertilizers are gaining popularity in eco-farming.
- Fecal transplants are now standard treatment for severe intestinal conditions.
- Biogas plants run on human and animal waste to generate renewable energy.
And as climate concerns grow, the ancient wisdom of closing the waste loop—treating human output as input—may yet guide our future.
Poop and pee might seem like taboo topics, but they tell a powerful story about human adaptation, innovation, and survival. From the Roman laundromat to the Vedic temple, from battlefield alchemy to sacred fire, our ancestors knew that the end of digestion didn’t mean the end of usefulness.
So next time you flush and forget, consider this: that which we call waste might just be the key to something ancient, sacred, and surprisingly smart.