A short history of people and soap making

From prehistoric times, through dark and middle ages, indigenous ways, colonization, industrialization and capitalization -- soap-making's history is the story of cultures, a human tale.

Where does soap come from? Soap is created in the chemical reaction called saponification. Simply put, it is the process by which triglycerides (fats or oils) are mixed with sodium or potassium hydroxide (lye). The reaction produces glycerol (glycerin, a moisturizer) and a fatty acid salt that together came to be called "soap." You can find chemical drawings of the process here.

Where people don't have soap, skin is cleaned with water and scraping. Some people, even to this day, use pumice stones to scrape skin and clothing; other people rub dirt or clay on their skin and rinse it off with water. Before people learned about soaping chemistry, those lucky enough to have oil used it to soften skin and dirt's connection, then rub or scrape dirt away.

Soap makes cleaning easier, with or without pumice stones, wash cloths and scraping in two ways. Soap breaks the water bead, making water 'wetter;' and it suspends or holds dirt, so the 'wetter' water can rinse soap and dirt away.

All over the world indigenous people have long used roots and berries that contain natural cleansers called plant saponifiers. Soapwort, yucca, California soap root and Bouncing Bet are North American varieties that, when dried, grated and added to water, will make suds.

People have spit-roasted meats in outdoor fires a long time, too. And if you think about it, outdoor cooking methods would have readily mixed animal fats with wood ash. When it rained, people tending fires and preparing meals surely discovered soap. Soap has been created all over the world wherever animal fats met fire.

The industrialization of soap is part of the story, and where legends enter in.

The Gauls, a Germanic people, died hair red using wood ashes and melted animal fat.

Celtic folks claim they were the first people to bathe with soap.

According to stories out of ancient Rome, Italians discovered a 'cleaning product' at the base of Mount Sapo, below the altars where animals were sacrificed in religious ceremonies. Melted animal fat and wood ash merged, creating saponification, or soap deposits along banks of the Tiber River.

There's been a lot of soap history since. France lays claim to being the first country to make olive oil, or castille soap. It became prized all over the world, and olive oil is a major ingredient of November's Natural Soap today. But the best soaps don't have to come from France anymore.

You can't study the history of soap without discussing the history of personal hygiene, and a lot of environmental destruction, too. England and the New World in particular.

During the Dark Ages (500 to 1500 AD) throughout Europe there wasn't a lot of soap making or bathing going on. Plagues and diseases were rampant. When people are starving, oils are eaten and soap making isn't a leading priority. When countries are at war, with a few individuals hoarding wealth, hunger increases. More war, more hoarding, more hunger, less hygiene, more disease and that pattern held throughout the age that was given the name of Dark.

When the Middle Ages dawned, poets and writers crafted amusing tales of the ongoing battle to dispose of human waste, but what wasn't a laughing matter were city folks who were literally living amid piles of it. Instead of creating sanitary policies, people just accepted it. Human waste ran in open gutters along streets; the gentry, dining with plenty of food and friends around them, simply stepped away from the table to relieve themselves in a chamber pot.

Public baths eventually opened across Europe, another old human practice, but they were banned during the plagues of the Middle Ages. Sadly, science lacking, people had no way of knowing trade ships from Asia carried plague-infected rats. Rat-to-human transmission came via fleas. Bath houses weren't culprit, but closed anyway.

Head lice thrived. People who could afford wigs simply shaved their heads. All that wig powder? It smothered lice and masked body odors, a fashion statement of necessity.

Europeans used soap and alkali in the textile industry, if not for cleaning their bodies. About the time toiletry soap became popular, the government deemed it a luxury, taxed it and the poor did without, or made their own.

Colonists arriving on the shores of Cape Cod in 1620 brought about 18 gallons of soap along. They found it easy to make their own potassium hydroxide for soap, glass and candlemaking.Wood ashes and water when combined create it, called caustic soda or potash.

The early potash production was a fascinating industry, and when kept small-scale, made ecological 'green' or earth friendly sense. People either processed their ashes to make their own potash, or sold them to peddlers who took them to the "Ashie," a processing plant. Potash was used to supply local needs for candles, soap and glass.

England was fast using up its forests for creating these products, and potash became a valued export for the American colonists.

Pearlash (Pure Ash) was another matter, made by manufacturers using kilns that burned off all impurities, they were left with pure sodium hydroxide. There was a global demand for the New World product.

By the 1770's England was so deforested due to industrialization, they couldn't make soda for soap making without imports. Pearlash, or pure potash, was a product England needed so badly it restricted the colony's export of all New World Pearlash to English buyers.

From New England to the Ohio frontier, Soap Works were usually adjacent to or near a slaughterhouse and an "Ashie." Wood ash processed to soda was mixed with boiled or rendered animal fats to make soaps and candles on large scale. Like Europe, North American forests began to disappear.

European interest in soap and bathing had a revival when French chemist Louis Pasteur speculated scientifically about unseen germs, and the importance of hygiene to reduce human disease. Cleanliness in European culture began to catch on after the mid 1800's.

Surgeons and nurses in the U.S. Civil War (1860-65) noticed and noted publicly that wounded soldiers healed more quickly with higher survival rates when surroundings were clean. Soap took on new meaning.

In 1869 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, "Formerly, in New England, soap and candles were made in each separate family; now, comparatively few take this toil upon themselves. We buy soap of the soap-boiler, and candles of the candle-factor."

The first patent awarded by the United States Patent Office went to Samuel Hopkins for the pearlash processing sequence and operation, but the industry faltered when forest land became scarce on the Atlantic coast, the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. With westward expansion of white settlement, the industry prospered only until the forests were gone.

Ireland and Russia burned kelp that washed up on sea shores to obtain potash for soap making.

Aside from renewable resources like sun and wind, everything we need and use is grown or mined. Today, sodium hydroxide is made by mining limestone and processing with ammonia (the Solvey method) or by directly extracting Trona, a rare mineral called soda ash. Trona has been mined for over 100 years, but deposits in North America weren't discovered until 1938. The world's largest deposits are in the Green River Valley of Wyoming. Exploitation by global demand is probable without citizen involvement.

Today, most personal cleaning products aren't soap at all, but in fact are detergents or mixtures of chemicals and animal fats. Detergents don't contain natural glycerin. Soap made the old world way does.

Glycerin is a natural by-product of the soap-making process, and commercial manufacturers began to remove it, then use in lotions and creams for higher profits. It's also used in dynamite and a few thousand other applications. Glycerin is a humectant, with a property that takes water from the air and when left in soap, will bring moisture to your skin. We don't remove the glycerin in our soap-making process.

You'll get the best when you buy November's Natural Soap, because clean and pure cleans best.