Recorded use of soap-like material dates back to ancient Babylon, circa 2800 B.C. Archaeologists found evidence of Roman soap manufacturing in the ruins of Pompeii, placing it at around 79 A.D. It was Islam, however, that made soap a refined product that resembles the type of soap used in contemporary life. Using olive oil and other vegetable oils, essential fragrant oils such as thyme and cleansing lye, early Islamic peoples in what is now Iraq and Palestine developed soap. Later, Europeans developed castile soap.

Although it may seem self-evident, soap exists because water just does not do the job. For all that water will dissolve--such as sugar, salt and instant coffee--water cannot dissolve oily dirt, which flees from water molecules as if for dear life. Soap has the opposite effect because its molecule is a chain, one end of which hates oil and loves water, the other end vice versa. When soap interacts with a sink full of water or a bathtub, it clusters and snags dirt inside the cluster: whoosh and down the drain.

Function

Soap has served many purposes, and it has a "colorful" past. When bathhouses were all the rage in Europe, soap brought people together for not always good, clean fun. Soap has been misunderstood, to the tragic consequences of history. Bedeviled by superstition in Europe during the Middle Ages, soap was eschewed. The resulting filth contributed to plagues, time after time. Other societies, Japanese and Icelandic, embraced the use of soap and enjoyed the healthy consequences. Now soap is used for every possible type of hygiene and cleansing purpose.

With the advent of industrialization, soap became mass-produced and was more widely available. People came to enjoy the benefits of soap on a wider scale. In contemporary life, some people have turned to making soap at home. This is an odd luxury unimaginable to those who first enjoyed the wide-spread availability of soap. But, the supposed advantages of mass-produced soap have come under scrutiny for their chemical additives and even for animal testing of soap products. These tougher consumer standards have created a thriving organic soap market.

Household cleaners are part of the massive soap-producing industry. Not products to use on human skin, though, detergents often still contain phosphate, a chemical that the U.S. government recommended that manufacturers cease including in soap's ingredients. So many consumers have turned to organic cleaners that household names in cleaning, such as Clorox, have introduced all-natural cleaning products that have not been tested on animals. Questionable soap that is used on skin has antibacterial ingredients that are nothing more than harmful chemicals that may or may not kill bacteria and may also create resistant strains of bacteria. Organic, chemical-free soaps and household products are good choices--for the skin, for the environment and for the animals that are not needlessly used for testing.