The bathrooms that we usually have in our homes are legacies of European colonization around the world. Its current form, however, dates back millennia and would not have been possible without investments and the evolution of basic sanitation.
The health of a population is directly related to the physical environment it inhabits, as stated by Hippocrates in his text “Ares, waters and places”, written during the 5th century BC, in which the Greek thinker known as the 'father of medicine', states that in order to properly investigate health and the cause of disease it is necessary to observe and understand the inhabited environment from the seasons, the wind, the water, its geographical position, the land and the landscape and also the habits of the people who live there. Each civilization has developed a way of dealing with what we understand by sanitation today, depending on its time and also on its geographical, cultural, political and economic context.
The earliest recorded civilizations are known as hydraulic civilizations, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia. They, like China and the Indus Valley, developed along watersheds and close to large rivers. This proximity and the knowledge on how to manipulate the earth's resources, especially river water, was fundamental for its growth. In Egypt, for example, the control of the frequency of the Nile River allowed an irrigation system and the construction of dikes and piped water that supplied the palace. In Ancient Babylon there are records of water and sewage networks since about 3,000 BC. Later, the Roman Civilization developed sewage and supply systems that made possible the growth of its empire. Cloaca Máxima and the Aqueducts, together with a set of latrines and public baths, were essential to Roman culture.
