this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Explanation: Despite having a great many features which seem positively modern to our eyes, like public restrooms and clean water supply, other practices of the ancient Romans were less... intuitive to our eyes. Swishing fermented urine, for example, was used as a method of whitening teeth.
Worst part is, it works, though not nearly as well as any modern methods. It's the ammonia.
Another one that always surprised me was in using lead to sweeten wine.
But I'm sure historians 2,000 years from now will look at all the dumb dangerous poisonous things we're doing to ourselves today and wonder what the hell was wrong with us.
“I Have One Word for You: Plastics”.
(Plastics)
Pretty sure we mostly know them already. Problem is most aren't listening.
and we keep inventing new threats to the species.
see: AI - not just in it's horrible potential, but also it's ridiculous use of resources and carbon output.
The similar part is they also knew it was bad but they did it anyway.
Even worse, we are aware of the dangerous poisonous things we are doing to ourselves today, and we still keep doing them. What the hell is wrong with us?
Capitalism
Romans were plenty aware of the hazards of lead, too. Like us, they kept using it for economic reasons
Lobbyist s for big corporations
It'll be plastics. "They stored... Drinks in this?... Were they insane?"
One of those things that makes you wonder who tried it first and for long enough to notice that it whitened your teeth.
An even older use of urine was to clean clothes. In greek cities, there were pots to piss into on the street that launderers would pick up. So it probably evolved from that to cleaning other things, like your teeth.
"wait, you're supposed to spit at the end?" --discoverer
Probably noticed that pissing on a rock in the same place over and over started to bleach it