Roman Sewage System

Throughout time, the bathroom has been called a number of things, the Egyptians called it the House of Horror, while the Romans called it Necessarium or rooms of easement. But do we really know where these unique and extremely useful innovation came from? As well as all the little pieces that come about making what it is today. This innovation must have started somewhere and has continued to evolve. As long as human beings have been alive, it is known that humans have to dispose of unnecessary items from their bodies somewhere. And at times it wasn’t always so sanitary, but they didn’t really have much of a choice. As humans now days we are so intertwined with our easy access to plumbing. We forget that long ago, people didn’t have plumbing and sewage systems as advanced as we do now days.

Most people now days don’t even know how to function without them.

So let’s go back and find out how sewage systems developed into what they are today. It seemed to be that the Mesopotamian empire had great contributions from using clay and molding it into the desired shape, which later produced pipes that had tees and angle joints (Sewage History). Soon after, they found what looked like drainage systems in the streets of the Indus Civilizations. Until the Romans, Minoan systems of plumbing and drainage was the most advanced that’s been seen within the Western World (Sewage History). The Minoans Royal Palace could be responsible for what might have been the first toilet (Sewage History). While on the other hand Egypt upgraded this idea of a sewage system that had copper pipes. Then the Romans fell upon this idea, and created toilets similar to what we have today. As more and more civilizations evolved from this idea, the more complex and useful the sewage systems

became.
The Mesopotamian Empire is suggested to be one of the first major civilizations that were to have any type of sewage system in the Western World. Mesopotamia was located in the fertile crescent in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They were fortunate to be near rivers as it was their water source. There were three main empires that lived there, they were the Sumerians, Akkadian, and Babylonians. Due to their geographical location that Mesopotamia endorsed, it only allowed around eight inches of rainfall per year (Cole, Symes, Coffin, Stacey 7). Even with this limited rainfall they still had storm water drain systems in the streets (Sewage History). Throughout each of these empires the one thing that was carried over was plumbing (Urban Waste Development). Plumbing is to be considered a great innovation and helped them keep the city more sanitary. In some Babylonian homes, there would be cesspools underneath an opening in the floor, and people would sit on it and the wastes would fall into the opening underneath the house (Sewage History). The Babylonians made great use out of their clay, as they would make these ringed cesspools out of baked clay. The number of occupants of the household, depicted how big your cesspools were. The larger the home, the bigger diameter the cesspool would be (Sewage history). It was unfortunate for the servants who worked for these homes, they would have to carry their wastes away (Black). These servants would most likely be fisherman’s and farmers who would work at night to empty underground cesspools (Krystal). This was unfortunate for those that had the responsibility for cleaning out the cesspools. But as time went on, Babylonians were documented as the first place that used molded baked clay as drainage pipes, this allowed them to shape them in to what they needed to be (Sewage History). This could be where the tee joints and angle joints were configured which influenced the idea of sewage systems for the rest of time.
The Indus civilization was a very expanded society in terms of their ideas and technologies. They were located near the Indus river which benefited them as it was their water source. Which a water sources can have multiple purposes, as they can be a source for water, but it can also be where the waste ends up. Peasants of the Indus civilization did not have much, they lived in hovels, which were small unpleasant constructed dwellings, but most of these hovels had sanitation facilities (Sewage History). They found their ways to stay sanitized. We see this later in other civilizations such as the Romans. The Indus civilization had drainage systems in the streets, it was most likely that these were used for waste disposal not water, imagine the smell (Sewage History). These drains have to lead somewhere, they had wooden “bar screens” at the end of these drains that separated liquids from non-liquids (Sewage History). These wooden bar screens at the end of the drains, would confirm that these drains were for waste disposal and not for water. The liquids that got passed through the wooden bar screens into these brick-lined cesspools or also known as soak-pits (Sewage History). If these liquids did not go into soak-pits, they would be led into the river to be disposed of (Sewage History). This can cause issues if that is also where they are going to get their water, but it was known that they had wells which collected clean water (Sanitation of Indus Valley). Sewage systems in terms of their homes were usually connected to sewers in the streets. Bathrooms and Latrines were often located near each other, there were often rooms located adjacently to the bathroom that had a well. The well was for the use of flushing, where there was a bathroom, there was a latrine located close by, the idea of the latrine being near the bathroom showed that these people valued their cleanliness (Sewage History). It would be important for the well to be close by the bathroom and the latrines, as it would be unpleasant if they had to go somewhere far and lug a bucket of water to flush the toilet, or to clean yourself with the latrine. For homes that had second floors, this where the idea of terra-cotta piping and vents became handy (Sewage History). As it also proved useful for producing garbage chutes (Sewage History). We have learned that the Indus civilization had drainage systems located in the street, it later evolved to having man holes that have stone covers that were positioned along the street drains. These man holes are an item that has been carried over to modern days as we have man holes located in almost every main street in the world.