Toilet Paper Was Invented in Ancient China, And It Took An Incredibly Long Time For The Rest of the World to Catch Up
Toilet paper is something that people rely on every single day. But it wasn’t always around. In fact, for the longest time, the western world had to come up with other creative solutions to cleaning themselves. They used sea shells, sponges attached to sticks, leaves, and newspapers to clean themselves. The first written account of toilet paper came from ancient China in 589 A.D from a scholar named Yen Chih-Thui. He wrote, “Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.” In the 14th century, the Chinese manufactured 10 million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets annually. In 1393, thousands of perfumed paper sheets were also produced for the Hongwu Emperor’s imperial family. Mass produced toilet paper as we know it today didn’t come around until the 1800’s.