In honor a holiday that I never knew existed, I wish to share a picture of a toilet. But not just any toilet; it’s an ancient toilet from Teotihuacán, probably dating to about 250 CE.
I know next to nothing about Teotihuacán, but I’ve had to brush up on it because I’m lecturing about ancient Mesoamerica tomorrow (I’m a substitute teacher in a global history course). As I understand, this particular commode was part of an extensive set of rather nice apartment complexes constructed as part of an urban renewal project of some kind. It certainly points to an organized bureaucracy, perhaps even a sort of nascent public health department, to recognize the value of proper bathroom facilities in a city that was at point as large as 80,000 people.
Of course, it also reminds me of a cautionary tale about toilets that appears in Aelian’s On the Characteristics of Animals (13.6). According to Aelian, a giant octopus swam up a sewer in Puteoli and entered a house where some Iberian merchants were storing pickled fish, which the octopus promptly devoured. So there are drawbacks to plumbing as well. And I think we can all agree that the moral of this story is to always check your toilet for octopuses.