History of Soap

The oldest known lathers are certain plants that contain saponin, a substance which yields soap-like suds. The best known saponaceous plant is soapbark (Quillaja Saponaria), an evergreen shrub native to Chile whose inner bark is used in some shampoos. Man-made soap, however is formed when a fatty acid and an alkali are brought into contact in the presence of water. Although the circumstances of discovering this chemical reaction are unknown, it has been speculated that it was first discovered by the Romans at Sapo, a hilly area near Rome, where animals were burned in sacrifice to the gods. The animal fat and ash thus accumulated at the altar would react with rainwater to form soap which trickled down the hillside into the river Tiber where ordinary Romans found the sudsy water conducive to cleaning soiled garments. Regardless of the truth of this legend, the name of the product in many languages seems to be a derivative of the word Sapo: soap (English) , sapone (Italian), savon (French), and Sabun (Arabic).

The first evidence of soapmaking process

was recorded on Sumerian clay tablets dating from 2500 B.C. The soap, produced from goat fat and ashes of a native bush, was used to clean wool and fleece. It is thought that the Celtic Gauls made a hair shampoo from goats fat and beechwood ash and used it in bartering with the Phoenicians around 600 B.C. The irrefutable evidence of ancient soapmaking is a soap factory that was uncovered in the ruins at Pompeii, in southwest Italy, preserved by the lava ashes of Vesuvius when it erupted in 79 A.D. The first reference to soap, used for cleaning persons or clothes however, is by the Greek physician, Galen, in the second century A.D.

Production and use of soap was almost completely halted during the European Dark Ages that followed the fall of The Roman Empire. Only in the eastern Mediterranean regions of Byzantine Empire and the expanding Arab world soapmaking remained alive and active. Around the 8th century however, soapmaking was revived in Italy and Spain. By the 13th century, soapmaking appeared in France and by the 14th, in England. Louis Pasteurs theory that microbes were the cause of many diseases, fostered a concern with cleanliness that prompted the hygienic movement of the early 1800 and by mid 1800s soap factories were established in most large villages where householders could obtain the precious bar soap in exchange for the fat of the slaughtered animals.

The large-scale and controlled production of soap as we know it today became possible in 1823, when a French chemist, Eugene-Michel Chevreul, outlined the chemical reaction between fat and lye which produces soap and another until-then-unknown substance, which he named glycerin. By 1885, the English industrialist William Hesketh Lever had founded the Lever Brothers (as in Unilever, the consumer product conglomerate with annual sales of over $57B) and was making and selling the first soap with a registered name the Sunlight. The Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century which produced inexpensive cotton clothing that required more frequent washing increased the demand of soap. It wasnt long before the growth in soap production outgrew the supply of animal fats and oil seeds from tropical plantation. The shortage of vegetable oil was resolved in 1909 with the development of the hydrogenation process, whereby inferior vegetable oils could be transformed into hard soap bars and by 1914, Lever had solved the problem of animal fat shortage by making artificial animal fat.
The soapmaking process was changed drastically around 1940, when chemists developed a method to make soap continuously and not batch by batch. The new method was faster and more efficient, with warm soap extruded continuously before being cut and stamped into bars. Todays multi-billion dollar soap and detergent industry is dominated by Proctor & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive, and Unilever.
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