Archives reveal that Babylonians were making soap around 2899 B.C. They were the first ones to master the art of soap making. They made it from fats boiled wish ashes. On the other side, history also tells us that in the year 1550 BC, Egyptians mixed animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to produce a soap-like substance. Early Romans also made soaps in the first century A.D from urine and therefore, soap was widely known in the Roman Empire. The first soap substance is hence dated back to 2800 B.C manufactured by the first soap makers who were Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, as well as the ancient Greeks and Romans. All of them made the soap by mixing fats, oils and salts, which was not used for bathing and personal hygiene, but rather for cleaning cooking utensils and for medicinal purposes. In the beginning, soap making was an exclusive technique used by small groups of people and its raw materials were very expensive. But overtime, recipes for soap making became widely known and the price of soaps started to be reduced in 1791 when a Frenchman by the name of Leblanc discovered a chemical process that allowed soap to be sold for significantly less money. Advances came as the science of chemistry developed because more was understood about the ingredients and in the beginning of the 20th century; a bathing soap was separated from a laundry detergent. Today, there are different soaps made for a vast array of purposes. Soap is available for personal, commercial and industrial use. There is handmade, homemade and commercially produced soap. There is soap used to wash clothes, dishes and cars, there is soap used for your pet, soap for your carpet and soap for your child... but for many types of cleaning, soaps are a lesser used product these days, as alternatives to soap are the main choice.
