Myth has it that in 1,000 B.C. soap was discovered on Sappo Hill in Rome by a group of women rinsing their clothes in the river at the base of a hill, below a higher elevation where animal sacrifice had taken place. They noticed the clothes coming clean as they came in contact with the soapy clay oozing down the hill and into the water. They later discovered that this same cleansing substance was formed when animal fat was soaked down through the wood ashes and into the clay soil.
Factually, we know that soap has been around for about 2,800 years. The earliest known evidence of soap use are Babylonian clay cylinders dating from 2800 BC containing a soap-like substance. A formula for soap consisting of water, alkali and cassia oil was written on a Babylonian clay tablet around 2200 BC.
The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) indicates that ancient Egyptians bathed regularly and combined animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to create a soap-like substance. Egyptian documents mention that a soap-like substance was used in the preparation of wool for weaving.
According to Pliny the Elder, the Phoenicians prepared it from goat's tallow and wood ashes in 600 BC and sometimes used it as an article of barter with the Gauls. The word "soap" appears first in a European language in Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis, which discusses the manufacture of soap from tallow and ashes, but the only use he mentions for it is as a pomade for hair; he mentions rather disapprovingly that among the Gauls and Germans, men are likelier to use it than women
Soap was widely known in the Roman Empire; whether the Romans learned its use and manufacture from ancient Mediterranean peoples or from the Celts, inhabitants of Britannia, is not known. Early Romans made soaps in the first century A.D. from urine to make a soaplike substance. The urine contained ammonium carbonate which reacted with the oils and fat in wool for a partial saponification. People called fullones walked the city streets collecting urine to sell to the soapmakers.
The Celts, who produced their soap from animal fats and plant ashes, named the product saipo, from which the word soap is derived. The importance of soap for washing and cleaning was apparently not recognized until the 2nd century A.D. ; the Greek physician Galen mentions it as a medicament and as a means of cleansing the body. Previously soap had been used as medicine.
The writings attributed to the 8th-century Arab savant Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber) repeatedly mention soap as a cleansing agent. The Arabs made the soap from vegetable oil as olive oil or some aromatic oils such as thyme oil. Sodium Lye (Al-Soda Al-Kawia) NaOH was used for the first time and the formula hasn't changed from the current soap sold in the market. From the beginning of the 7th century soap was produced in Nablus (Palestine), Kufa (Iraq) and Basra (Iraq). Arabian Soap was perfumed and colored, some of the soaps were liquid and others were hard. They also had special soap for shaving. It was commercially sold for 3 Dirhams (0.3 Dinars) a piece in 981 AD.
Historically, soap was made by mixing animal fats with lye. Because of the caustic lye, this was a dangerous procedure (perhaps more dangerous than any present-day home activities) which could result in serious chemical burns or even blindness. Before commercially-produced lye was commonplace, it was produced at home for soap making from the ashes of a wood fire.
In Europe, soap production in the Middle Ages centered first at Marseilles, later at Genoa, then at Venice. Although some soap manufacture developed in Germany, the substance was so little used in central Europe that a box of soap presented to the Duchess of Juelich in 1549 caused a sensation. As late as 1672, when a German, A. Leo, sent Lady von Schleinitz a parcel containing soap from Italy, he accompanied it with a detailed description of how to use the mysterious product.
Castile soap, made entirely from olive oil, was produced in the Kingdom of Castile in Europe as early as the 16th century (about 1616). Fine sifted alkaline ash of the Salsola species of thistle, called barilla, was boiled with locally available olive oil, instead of tallow. By adding salty brine to the boiled liquor, the soap was made to float to the surface, where it could be skimmed off by the soap-boiler, leaving the excess lye and impurities to settle out. This produced what was probably the first white hard soap, which hardened further as it was aged, without losing its whiteness, forming jabon de Castila, which eventually became the generic name.
The first English soapmakers appeared at the end of the 12th century in Bristol. In the 13th and 14th centuries, a small community of them grew up in the neighborhood of Cheapside in London. In those days soapmakers had to pay a tax on all the soap they produced. After the Napoleonic Wars this tax rose as high as three pence per pound; soap-boiling pans were fitted with lids that could be locked every night by the tax collector in order to prevent production under cover of darkness. Not until 1853 was this high tax finally abolished, at a sacrifice to the state of over £1,000,000. Before this because of the high cost of soap, ordinary households made do without soap until about 1880, when cheap factory-made soap began to flood the market. Soap came into such common use in the 19th century that Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, declared that the quantity of soap consumed by a nation was an accurate measure of its wealth and civilization.
Soap was certainly known in England in the sixteenth century but as it was made of fat, and fat was needed for making candles and rushlights, it was always a prerogative of the rich. When soap was used it was primarily used for cleaning linens and clothes rather than the human body. Since little emphasis was placed on using soap for bodily cleanliness, people (shall we say) had an "air" about them that they tried to overcome by wearing sachets of herbs around their necks or carrying these sachets in their pockets. When baths were taken, whether soap was used or not, the bath water was traditionally shared among the family members with the small children being bathed last. The end result was water so dirty and murky, that a small child could literally be lost in the water - hence the saying "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".
Early soapmakers probably used ashes and animal fats. Simple wood or plant ashes containing potassium carbonate were dispersed in water, and fat was added to the solution. This mixture was then boiled; ashes were added again and again as the water evaporated. During this process a slow chemical splitting of the neutral fat took place; the fatty acids could then react with the alkali carbonates of the plant ash to form soap (this reaction is called saponification).
Animal fats containing a percentage of free fatty acids were used by the Celts. The presence of free fatty acids certainly helped to get the process started. This method probably prevailed until the end of the Middle Ages, when slaked lime came to be used to causticize the alkali carbonate. Through this process, chemically neutral fats could be saponified easily with the caustic lye. The production of soap from a handicraft to an industry was helped by the introduction of the Leblanc process for the production of soda ash from brine (about 1790) and by the work of a French chemist, Michel Eugène Chevreul, who in 1823 showed that the process of saponification is the chemical process of splitting fat into the alkali salt of fatty acids (that is, soap) and glycerin. The method of producing soap by boiling with open steam, introduced at the end of the 19th century, was another step toward industrialization. The industrialization of soap making though tended to use more chemically produced ingredients and less natural ingredients, and produced in essence a detergent rather than a soap such as our ancestors used.
With World War I and the shortages of fats and oils that occurred, people felt compelled to look for a replacement for soap, leading to the invention of synthetic detergents. These detergents, while being able to clean our clothes effectively, are comprised of harsh chemicals that clean, scent, and coat our clothes. Unfortunately, many of these synthetic detergents have found their way into our skin care products. This has caused in some people super sensitivity to these "soaps", rashes, skin irritations, and allergies plus a general drying out of the skin. Increasingly, we are required to use hand creams and lotions to prevent or reduce the dryness and roughness arising from exposure to household detergents, wind, sun, and dry atmospheres. Like facial creams, they act largely by replacing lost water and laying down an oil film to reduce subsequent moisture loss while the body's natural processes repair the damage.
In modern times, the use of soap has become universal in industrialized nations due to a better understanding of the role of hygiene in reducing the population size of pathogenic microorganisms. Manufactured bar soaps first became available in the late nineteenth century, and advertising campaigns in Europe and the United States helped to increase popular awareness of the relationship between cleanliness and health. By the 1950s, soap had gained public acceptance as an instrument of personal hygiene.
In recent years, there has been a grassroots return to making "natural" soap in the home. These cottage industries make soap from ingredients found in nature for its skin care qualities rather than a synthetic soap which relies upon laboratory-made chemicals to make the soap look and feel and act in a certain way. It is tempting for soap manufacturers to lean toward synthetics and away from natural materials. Synthetics are more stable in more situations and less expensive in the long run unlike the fats and oils which differ slightly from tree to tree and region to region.
As Susan Miller Cavitch states in her book The Natural Soap Book: Making Herbal and Vegetable Based Soaps,
Some individuals have chosen not to use the commercial "soaps" and continue to make soap in the home. The traditional name "soaper", for a soapmaker, is still used by those who make soap as a hobby. Those who make their own soaps are also known as soapcrafters. Many of these soapcrafters have expanded their soap making from a hobby basis to a business basis to make natural soap more available to the public at large. Many come up with their own recipes using different butters and essential oils to help those with sensitive skin or who just want to pamper their skin so that it retains its elasticity, moisture, and smoothness."As we become more and more comfortable with synthetics in all areas of our lives, we run the risk of losing natural defenses and continually needed greater synthetic intervention. Skin care is but one facet of this phenomenon. Our skin is remarkably capable of functioning on its own to protect us, but, as we use more and more harsh, foreign substances, we alter the body's chemical makeup and leave our skin without its natural defenses. We risk becoming dependent on stronger and stronger synthetics to take the place of the body's natural systems. We must each, as individuals, decide which route to go - the way of nature or the way of the lab."
The most popular soap making processes today is the cold process method, where fats such as olive oil react with lye. Soapmakers sometimes use the melt and pour process, where a premade soap base is melted and poured in individual molds. Some soapers also practice other processes, such as the historical hot process, and make special soaps such as clear soap (aka glycerin soap).
Handmade soap differs from industrial soap in that, usually, an excess of fat is used to consume the alkali (superfatting), and in that the glycerin is not removed. Superfatted soap, soap which contains excess fat, is more skin-friendly than industrial soap; though, if not properly formulated, it can leave users with a "greasy" feel to their skin. Often, emollients such as jojoba oil or shea butter are added 'at trace' (the point at which the saponification process is sufficiently advanced that the soap has begun to thicken), after most of the oils have saponified, so that they remain unreacted in the finished soap.
Natural soapcrafters today have many different ingredients to select from to produce wonderful and varied soap bars. These ingredients consist of:
- base oils available in today's market such as coconut oil, jojoba oil, avocado oil, castor oil, cottonseed oil, olive oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, peanut oil and soybean oil
- various butters like shea butter, mango butter, and cocoa butter for extra moisturizing capabilities
- other nutrients such as sweet almond oil, avocado oil, aloe vera, calendula oil, carrot root oil, various clays, and seaweed
- essential oils including peppermint, eucalyptus, spearmint, chamomile, geranium, rosemary, lavender, etc for scenting and therapeutic effects
- and various herbs and spices for color
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