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Bath-obsessed ancients (2016)

newscientist.com

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Re: Bath-obsessed ancients (2016)

#21

Post by OJFord »

User3456335 wrote: post #16
joebiden2 wrote: post #11

The wordy article boils down to: the baths were infested by bacteria and worms due to insufficient water cleaning. Interesting, but could be compressed to 2-3 paragraphs without losing any detail. Thanks for posting though.

Some other interesting things from the article that stuck with me: - Most toilets weren't connected to the sewers because they didn't want to have the smell of the sewers in their houses - The public latrines were considered a bad choice because of lack of privacy and shared spunges (based on texts on the walls) - The sewers were built mainly for the convenience of not having to transport water to and from within the…

> Apparently some emperor did realize that it wasn't smart to bathe with sick and healthy people at the same time but decided the sick would bathe before the healthy

Maybe he thought they were more in need of cleansing.

Even with today's knowledge, without application of today's tech (overnight chlorination say) it wouldn't really make a difference? Today's first bathing session comes after yesterday's second.

Re: Bath-obsessed ancients (2016)

#22

Post by gsich »

flextheruler wrote: post #14
pseingatl wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Isn’t the Burj Khalifa not even hooked up to the sewer system so all the feces and urine is loaded onto trucks daily? Also open air sewers are still common in a lot of places, an Iranian American friend of mine claimed he almost fell into one as a kid.

Fake news

Re: Bath-obsessed ancients (2016)

#24

Post by hsjqllzlfkf »

flextheruler wrote: post #14
pseingatl wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Isn’t the Burj Khalifa not even hooked up to the sewer system so all the feces and urine is loaded onto trucks daily? Also open air sewers are still common in a lot of places, an Iranian American friend of mine claimed he almost fell into one as a kid.

Why exactly would the Burj Khalifa no be hooked up to the sewer system?

Re: Bath-obsessed ancients (2016)

#25

Post by thatcat »

OJFord wrote: post #21
User3456335 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some other interesting things from the article that stuck with me: - Most toilets weren't connected to the sewers because they didn't want to have the smell of the sewers in their houses - The public latrines were considered a bad choice because of lack of privacy and shared spunges (based on texts on the walls) - The sewers were built mainly for the convenience of not having to transport water to and from within the…

> Apparently some emperor did realize that it wasn't smart to bathe with sick and healthy people at the same time but decided the sick would bathe before the healthy Maybe he thought they were more in need of cleansing. Even with today's knowledge, without application of today's tech (overnight chlorination say) it wouldn't really make a difference? Today's first bathing session comes after yesterday's second.

A simple bioactive sand filter would probably be sufficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosand_filter

Re: Bath-obsessed ancients (2016)

#26

Post by vient »

flextheruler wrote: post #14
pseingatl wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Isn’t the Burj Khalifa not even hooked up to the sewer system so all the feces and urine is loaded onto trucks daily? Also open air sewers are still common in a lot of places, an Iranian American friend of mine claimed he almost fell into one as a kid.

Dubai had some problems with sewage system capacity so using sewage trucks was necessary but it was not about Burj Khalifa. See https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/52204/is-the-se...

Re: Bath-obsessed ancients (2016)

#29

Post by Brybry »

gsich wrote: post #22
flextheruler wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the Burj Khalifa not even hooked up to the sewer system so all the feces and urine is loaded onto trucks daily? Also open air sewers are still common in a lot of places, an Iranian American friend of mine claimed he almost fell into one as a kid.

Fake news

The Iranian American friend's story seems plausible if iranwire is reliable [1][2]

Google translate from the mehr article suggests it's sewage, not just storm water.

> Siavash Mahmoudi pointed out that municipal open streams are built with the purpose of disposing of surface water and rainfall, and continued: Currently, these open streams are used as sewage disposal networks;

But it could be a bad translation.

[1] https://iranwire.com/en/iran/70976/

[2] https://www.mehrnews.com/news/5374817/

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