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Darius West

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What do people think about the possibility of soap in Glorantha?  I mean, it isn't very bronze age, but nor is it an overly complex recipe.  Is it the sort of thing the God Learners might well have popularized or are the people of Glorantha still cleaning themselves with denatured urine, vinegar, pummice, sand, ashes and/or strigils?  

Edited by Darius West
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As I consider Glorantha iron age with a bronze plating, I have no problem with civilized people using soap and watching with an arched eyebrow those woad covered barbarians.

The first soap manufacture recorded is from 2200, though there are some soap-like materials dated 2800 B.C., by the Babylonians, and I have no problem giving the Dara Happans first dibs in soap making, specially as you need ashes and they were the kind to burn a lot of things.

The Egyptians in the second millennia were the first to use alkaline salts as an alternative to ashes. First it was on textiles and then for medical purposes.

It were the Greeks and later the Romans who for some reason did not like soap for personal hygiene, which was another reason of conflict with the Persians, I imagine. Galenus was still in the 2nd century AD trying to get people wash with soad, for medical reasons.

The Gauls used soap to spike their hair (animal fat boiled with ashes), as it was better than fat alone, and probably better smelling after a couple of days. It is possible they also used it for other things...

You need to wash the wool to get fine textiles from it, so if you have a healthy wool industry, you surely have soap. That does not mean, as the Greeks show, that they use that on themselves, except when ordered by a medic.

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35 minutes ago, JRE said:

some soap-like materials dated 2800 B.C., by the Babylonians

Wikipedia does seem to cite a source saying this, but it is potentially misleading. That is about 1,000 years too early for Babylon as we know it: “There is little evidence that Babylon was anything other than a small town before the Old Babylonian period (1800-1600 [BCE]).” (Gwendolyn Leick, Mesopotamia: the Invention of the City, p. 249) Rivers had to change their courses before Babylon made sense, apparently.

The empire, the biblical stuff, the twirly beards — that’s all much later than 2800 BCE. Which is not to say there wasn’t soap in Mesopotamia in the Sumerian Early Dynastic period.

But it doesn’t matter, anyway: definitely have the Dara Happans sneer at the Orlanthi for putting their soap in their hair — they probably think it turns it red — how could you pass that up?

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

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1 hour ago, Darius West said:

What do people think about the possibility of soap in Glorantha?  I mean, it isn't very bronze age, but nor is it an overly complex recipe.  Is it the sort of thing the God Learners might well have popularized or are the people of Glorantha still cleaning themselves with denatured urine, vinegar, pummice, sand, ashes and/or strigils?  

I always knew @Effwas/is/always will be a trend setter! We were playing in 1611 in Torkani lands and rumour came of a large body of Lunars Tarshite troops moving home down the Pavis Road after being released from active status when the Prax campaign began to wind down.... Picking herself up she wanders to a nearby village on the road to set up a soap shoppe made from waste by-products found from around the stead... Seemed like the Issarian thing to do!

I like to think that not only did she do the "holy thing" of making something of value from nothing... but also, she saved travellers and downwind towns from a fate worse than death!

Edited by Bill the barbarian
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Checking a bit, most references loop in a recursive way without finding concrete evidence. The find were a set of clay cylinders with the inscription in Sumerian cuneiform "Fat and ashes." The 23rd century clay tablet describing the soap process, as part of wool  manufacture, was found in Girsu, then part of the kingdom of Lagash in the Akkadian empire, though most common sources claim it is also Babylonian. I suppose that as Babylonian priests kept using Sumerian cuneiform script, many old Sumerian inscriptions were initially considered Babylonian, despite the 500-1000 year gap.

The clay tablet describes wool washing and dyeing, as if you do not wash the wool of lanolin you cannot dye it. Probably the first washings were made with ashes, that combine "in-situ" with the lanolin to make a soap. What someone in Girsu recorded for the first time was mixing animal fats, in controlled amounts, with wood ash, to systematically wash the wool, more efficient than depending on the varying amounts of lanolin and its reactivity. Apparently Girsu was a big wool industry center, as other records found show 200,000 sheep shorn in a three month period. 

What we do not know is whether the Sumerians used that soap for washing something beyond the wool, or maybe it was a secret of the wool-makers. 

Some five hundred years later the Hittites were using soap for ritual purification of priests, and a few centuries later the Egyptians already used soap for many purposes, though textile washing remained the big one. They were the first to record the use of vegetable fats, besides the animal fats.

I would expect First Age Orlanthi to wear undyed woolen clothes, as the unwashed wool actually has better water repellency and cold resistance.

However, when they contacted the First council, they learnt of the wondrous invention of soap, which the Dara Happans claim was a less known gift of Antirius,as it was not needed while Yelm was in the sky. It was easy to make and allowed them to dye their wool with bright colours, almost as good as the Solars cotton. 

As it would wash woad very fast, and it was clearly a solar affectation, it did not become common for personal hygiene, but they found out that it was great to stiffen the hair without the rancid smell of tallow. 

It was Alakoring Dragonbreaker who spread the use of soap among the Orlanthi noble classes, if only to adopt the signs of rulership of other empires. 

The Westerners discovered soap separately, once again as a byproduct of wool processing, and for some time its use was restricted first to the Zzaburi that discovered it, then the Talari, which probably found it also to be helpful when they had to spend long periods of time near the Horali. Well off Dromali started using it as imitation of the other castes, but in some sects it is considered a caste crime, which means sweat lodges and hitting each other with branches remains a typical Dromali hygiene ritual.

Unlike earth, I propose that except for some traditionalist orlanthi clans and people in tree-less areas such as Prax, soap is well known and used in Glorantha. It is fantasy, so let out characters smell nice and avoid diarrhoea.

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I am so glad I began this topic.  I was under the misapprehension that soap was invented in Medieval France.  I suppose I should have checked wikipedia.

10 hours ago, JRE said:

Unlike earth, I propose that except for some traditionalist orlanthi clans and people in tree-less areas such as Prax, soap is well known and used in Glorantha. It is fantasy, so let out characters smell nice and avoid diarrhoea.

My thoughts exactly JRE. 

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20 hours ago, Darius West said:

What do people think about the possibility of soap in Glorantha?  I mean, it isn't very bronze age, but nor is it an overly complex recipe.  Is it the sort of thing the God Learners might well have popularized or are the people of Glorantha still cleaning themselves with denatured urine, vinegar, pummice, sand, ashes and/or strigils?  

Soap is not an essential part of cultures - there are records of peoples who rarely washed. For those who did use soap, many of them used plants. There are plants don't need any processing or need minimal processing to produce a soap, just pick the flowers or roots or whatever and start crumbling them into a lather. Or just pick the lumps of fat which drip into the ashes of the fire, they're already soap - fat + soda ash from wood fires + heat = soap. 

No idea what Gloranthans would do. Plenty of magic, and a much lower risk of death by disease. Probably widespread knowledge of plants, or simple magic cantrips which make the dirt jump off. Worst case you could always hit that verruca with a disrupt spell. 

Edited by EricW
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I think I heard once — on BBC radio, probably — that Tiber mud was good for washing because of all the animal fat and ashes from sacrifices. I am pretty sure I am not imagining having heard that, but that is a long way from being able to claim that Tiber mud really had saponic superpowers.

The world might have been a slightly happier place if only Enoch Powell had said, “Like the Roman, I seem to see the Tiber foaming with much soap.”

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NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

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Here for the soap as sacrifice story. The version I heard (maybe in a Norman O. Brown book?) was that people realized that runoff from funeral pyres  had unusual chemical properties, got clothes clean, etc. Might have had something to do with the ascetics who hang around South Asian cremation fields but that might be another failed memory.

Either way the symbolic economy is good for bronze age people to think. Corpses are uncanny so you need to get rid of them. Fire is a good way. Fire renders animal fat and produces ash. Introduce water (the sky is crying with us) and you get something good for eliminating stains, maybe it's also good against guilt and other psychic complaints. Then as you start figuring it out you deliberately sacrifice animals to the process and attribute everything to a god. 

The world capital of soap is probably Alkoth.

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The problem with the pyre soap theory is that any fire hot enough to turn wood into ash will burn rather than render the fat. Which is also why you do not get soap when you do a barbecue. 

However if you clean with ashes anything greasy, it becomes gradually more effective, as the alkali in the ash saponifies (turns into soap) the fat, so your washing water  washes increasingly better. Ashes from the temple sacrifices surely wash better than any other ash, and soon you may have a secondary business with holy ashes. 

Most of the soap/detergent is not used for people but clothes, both in manufacturing and later in cleaning. In fact many cloth soaps are irritant to human skin (too much lye), which is one of the resons why clothes washing was a hard and painful work. A good reason to use soap sparingly if you end up with red skin and open sores.

However, as the limitating factor in soap manufacture is good quality ash (if you do not have enough chemical alchemical knowledge that you can obtain directly a strong lye), Alkoth may still be the Lunar Soap emporium.

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Soap?? We Gagarthi don't fall for such tricks! It's a scheme to remove your protective oils and woad and replace them with flowery scents! Probably one of the machinations of the Aldryami!

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ROLAND VOLZ

Running: nothing | Playing: Battletech Hero, CoC 7th Edition, Blades in the Dark | Planning: D&D 5E Home Game, Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle, HeroQuest 1E Sartarite Campaign

D&D is an elf from Tolkien, a barbarian from Howard, and a mage from Vance fighting monsters from Lovecraft in a room that looks like it might have been designed by Wells and Giger. - TiaNadiezja

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22 hours ago, JRE said:

I would expect First Age Orlanthi to wear undyed woolen clothes, as the unwashed wool actually has better water repellency and cold resistance.

Pragmatism over ostentation? Not really an Orlanthi virtue.

 

Glorantha is post-apocalyptic world. Very little technological advancement needs to have been invented within time, although much may have been re-discovered.

 

Soap is a rare case of a Germanic loan word for a technology entering the Latin sphere of influence. Pliny describes the different soaps of the Germans and the Celts depending on what ash they are using for unestering the fatty acids from the fats. Of course there are no earlier written sources for soap production, and the very nature of soap makes archaeological evidence difficult to find, too.

The Norse devoted one weekday to the activity of bathing, or rather "laugar", which may mean bleaching with alkali or using soap.

However, the Hallstatt textiles and the Scythian textiles that archaeology managed to produce all were brightly died. What reason do we have to assume that the Sumerians did this first when say the Tripolje-Cucuteni folk apparently had elaborate and colorful textiles (as witnessed by their ceramics) and were living in a climate where wool makes more sense than climate-optimum Mesopotamia?

 

The art of leatherworking entered Europe before the African homo variant arrived. Neanderthal skin-scraping tools made from ribs are hardly different from late 19th century technology. This suggests that the knowledge about bleaching the skins would have been present, too, as other than Lady Gaga few people will be comfortable to run around in a dress of decomposing flesh that will attract predators and scavengers. Working wool would only be an afterthought for preparing furs.

Paleolithic pyrotechnology is often under-estimated. The birch tar they used for glue as well as chewing gum is the result of a distillation process with well-regulated temperatures in the various zones of the fire pit. They were able to temper flint and similar knapping material for improved knapping. Surely they would have been able to provide ash for curing processes, with the tallow inside of the hides turning to soap.

 

As a result, I wouldn't be surprised in the least to find cold climate hsunchen possessing a native soap equivalent.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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Praxians might actually have access to superior (re-crystallized) potash thanks to the depredations of Oakfed during the Great Darkness. Tallow is provided by butchering, the bottleneck might be the fuel and the vessels to boil the soap, although stones taken out of a dung fire would serve nicely.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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On 9/26/2022 at 8:21 AM, Darius West said:

What do people think about the possibility of soap in Glorantha?  I mean, it isn't very bronze age, but nor is it an overly complex recipe.  Is it the sort of thing the God Learners might well have popularized or are the people of Glorantha still cleaning themselves with denatured urine, vinegar, pummice, sand, ashes and/or strigils?  

No one has mentioned my favourite surprise I lay on players as part of how my Glorantha varies... Saunas!

Back in the day when Orlanthi were patterned after celtic/vikings I figured saunas were a mandatory feature of any good barbaric (they once were called barbarians too, go figure) stead, in fact the bigger and richer ones had multiple saunas!

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7 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Pliny describes the different soaps of the Germans and the Celts depending on what ash they are using for unestering the fatty acids from the fats. Of course there are no earlier written sources for soap production

Well, I don’t know about that. Here is the abstract of An Ancient Cleanser: Soap Production and Use in Antiquity (in ISBN13: 9780841231122) which seems reputable, I guess — emphasis mine:

Quote

The production of soap is one of the later forms of chemical technology in the ancient world. Yet, it is also one of the least studied. Unlike inorganic materials such as glass or ceramics, soap does not leave any archeological treasures that can be studied to chart its history. Instead, our understanding of the chemical technology of soap must rely primarily on the written record. The earliest evidence of soap production dates to the 3rd millennium BCE from Mesopotamian clay tablets. As soap can be produced through the simple combination of plant ash and animal fat, it is quite possible that it was formed prior to that time period, although no empirical evidence for its earlier existence has been found. An overview of the historical production and usage of soap will be presented, as it pertains to its origins in antiquity through the Roman era.

Also, from a physicist-cum-journalist, not an Assyriologist — make of that what you will — we have:

Quote

 

The making of soap dates back at least 5,000 years to the Sumer region (now southern Iraq) in Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Sumerian texts from that era give brief descriptions of ways of making soap from the resin of conifers such as fir trees.

These techniques were later expanded by the Babylonians and Egyptians, who devised new forms of soap made from plant ash, oils and animal fat. The end result had the same basic properties as modern soaps: when combined with water and agitated they created a lather and helped remove dirt.

Soap originally seems to have been used primarily for the treatment of ailments. One Sumerian text dating back to 2200 BC describes a form of soap being used to wash a person who seems to have had some type of skin condition.

 

Don’t let all that stuff about Babylon in 2800 BCE put you off. I reckon someone’s thought went Sumer --> Southern Mesopotamia --> Babylonia --> Babylon and sent us off on a wild goose chase.

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NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

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1 minute ago, mfbrandi said:
26 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Pliny describes the different soaps of the Germans and the Celts depending on what ash they are using for unestering the fatty acids from the fats. Of course there are no earlier written sources for soap production

Well, I don’t know about that.

I should have been specific: soap production in northern Europe. The reason being that there was no literacy there.

While there seem to have been a few Greek explorers, producing coordinates for Ptolemy to add to his geography, none seem to have left any records of soap production or washing habits of the northerners.

Yes, the Mesopotamians (no idea which branch of them) left a recipe in writing.

I am talking about the inevitablility of developing something similar to (liquid) soap when treating hides, and carrying that over to wool after having seen its results on pelts might not be that much of an innovation.

 

6 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Unlike inorganic materials such as glass or ceramics, soap does not leave any archeological treasures that can be studied to chart its history.

I said something similar as the article you quoted, but I probably need to add a qualifier - there might be pottery used in the process with enough residues (chalk soaps, for instance) available to modern surface investigation that the archaeological record might actually deliver traces.

Relying on the written record for crafts is bound to be a failure. Crafters don't usually sit down to write about what they are doing. It takes geeks with time on their hand to notice what they are doing and to write it down for other people who might be curious.

 

Bleach and fat will produce free fatty acids, which are the agent in soaps. There are places where soda or potash occurs naturally. There are saline lakes which contain that kind of bleach. (Prax is going to have some, with all the white ash produced by Oakfed. Possibly in the Dead Place, though.)

Tanners mix e.g. ash and animal brains to treat hides. Brains = fatty tissue, ash = alkaline pH. Instant soap.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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47 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Tanners mix e.g. ash and animal brains to treat hides. Brains = fatty tissue, ash = alkaline pH. Instant soap.

Maybe the Zorak Zoran temple is a good place to buy soap: they have plenty of ashes and surely plenty of brains splattered about the place.

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

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Pretty sure one of the earliest mentions of soap is in a letter to one Ea-nasir, telling him where to put some soap he was supposed to have shipped. Translation tools do a poor job of translating the anatomical terms used in this letter, leaving it as quite a puzzle for archaeologists!

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ROLAND VOLZ

Running: nothing | Playing: Battletech Hero, CoC 7th Edition, Blades in the Dark | Planning: D&D 5E Home Game, Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle, HeroQuest 1E Sartarite Campaign

D&D is an elf from Tolkien, a barbarian from Howard, and a mage from Vance fighting monsters from Lovecraft in a room that looks like it might have been designed by Wells and Giger. - TiaNadiezja

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Returning to soap, I am sure there were plenty of incidental soap manufacture before the writing obsessed Sumerians came into the picture. But what writing allows you to do is to record and then spread a technology. Surely people used ashes and other mordants to treat fibers, which means you can have dyed textiles and leather without a deliberate soap making industry. But you need a deliberate soap making industry to process the wool of 200.000 sheep as mentioned in the Girsu text. 

I am sure some pre-Dawn clans knew the secret of washing wood with ashes, or even the water leached from certain trees ashes, as the lye content will vary on the tree species and the ground conditions. But it would be a secret, and they would trade their green woolen cloaks, but not how they make them. Others would keep black and white sheep, and make checkered clothes without dyeing. But I was proposing the Dara Happans because they work very well as a written form obsessed urban freaks that may need to process huge amounts of textiles (including washing them).

In most cases using soap to wash people came after the practical use, and in between there usually was a period of medicinal and ritual use, probably because those soaps were quite irritant, so good as a show of piety or as an antiseptic, but not something you want on your skin daily, or possibly weekly. Lye soap is extremely cheap and can be produced in most areas with animals, oily plants and wood. A skin friendly soap with nice smell and essential oils is a luxury item that requires quite a bit of Alchemy to produce reliably.

Many salt areas in deserts are actually acidic, so it would require a certain trial and error or alchemical knowledge to find the good ones for fat saponification. 

I am in the invariant god machine field after Time/Compromise, but with the caveat that worshippers and specially heroes can modify and rewire the god machines, incrementally by joining the godhead, and qualitatively, by the right questing. Being nitpicky, I would consider many so called gods within time as only big heroes or magical constructs, till they accept and are accepted by the Compromise, when they become true deities, and invariant.

In the old discussions, worshippers and heroes have free will, though heroes usually sacrifice free will for power. Gods in the Compromise have no free will, so they cannot act in new ways, unless someone with will makes them.

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7 hours ago, EricW said:

Kind of a Stone Age version of dynamiting the lake, they used a natural soap instead of dynamite.

Yeah, not just Australia. I had thought of linking to the Wikipedia article on saponin, but I thought I had said more than enough, yesterday. The Salmon People better not get into it with the Aldryami.

For anyone with JSTOR access, “Fish-Poison Plants” (mentioned in the Wikipedia article) from the wonderfully named Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information is downloadable for free.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

The TL;DR of “Fish-Poison Plants” is that such plants are widespread, have a diversity of active ingredients and so of speed and effectiveness/lethality, aren’t all soapy, are widely but not universally used, are often banned (and not just in modern times: e.g. Kaiser Frederick II banned “yew fishing” in 1212), some are effective as insecticides, some keep rodents away or act as rodenticides, some make crocodiles come out of the water (gulp!), eels and marine fish may be more resistant (but there is poison-fishing at sea), some are blistering agents (to human skin), some are cited in court in human-poisoning cases, and some are said to make the fish spoil more quickly. So it seems reasonable for Aldryami, fishing cults, and herbalists to know about the local fish-poison plants (for ideas of what grows where, look up IRL equivalents here) — some of which may be good for poisoning people or use as arrow toxins. Arroin cultists (and fish hsunchen) can be expected to be knowledgeable but very disapproving. Don’t say I never give you any gameable content.

I am wondering whether one could make slug pellets for dragonsnails from some of the more extreme fish poisons.

Edited by mfbrandi
notes on fish poisons
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NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

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Use of soap requires water, in deserts or dry areas, which makes Dara Happa somewhat less suited for soap for personal hygiene much of the year, at least away from the river bottoms.

In Prax, only the oases or the (mostly seasonal) rivers allow that luxury. Sending used lye soap down the Good Canal might actually be helpful to keep the Devil from growing, and the Storm Bull berserks at the Block might rinse themselves off with lye soap regularly.

 

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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