What impresses me about this one, is the reply to a critical comment made:
Commenter: “One quibble: The Romans did, in fact, know about soap, which they called “sapo”. This is a Celtic loan in latin, which shows from where they got it.”
Dr. Janega: “Sapo is originally recorded largely as a pomade for hair in Pliny the Elder and is a loan word from Germanic. A lye based ball that was imported from Germanic tribes becomes more common from 2 AD, but is largely seen as a barbaric pretension. Large scale soap making and widespread recipes are not common until the medieval period. Thanks for playing.”
To know so much about this topic - and so much better (I assume, I didn’t actually do any due diligence) - in such a mercurial field as history. Is kind of amazing to me. How did the commenter end up with the impression that Sapo is of celtic origin? And Dr. Janega knows that it is of Germanic origin?
As somebody with a masters in History (of Science And Technology) I always wondered about the ability to make such sweeping statements (as both do here). https://mstdn.social/@marick/115520507743372999
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