1/5/2023 0 Comments Grand ages rome![]() A second shallower one ran beneath my feet. Underneath the seats was a stone-lined gutter that must have carried citizens’ waste out of the city. Talk about not having inhibitions, conducting your private business next to a dozen other folks. Wouldn’t they put you in the immediate proximity of someone else’s butt? There were no dividers of any kind in between. But the holes were cut so close to one another that I was left wondering how people actually used them. ![]() Turning around, I discovered two more rows of holes, altogether able to accommodate a small party. Grossly ambitious and rooted in scientific scholarship, "The Other Dark Matter" shows how human excrement can be a life-saving, money-making resource-if we make better use of it. The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Health In front of me was a long white marble bench with a row of holes shaped just like modern toilet seats: a Roman bathroom. One day, I ambled into an open space drastically different from anything I’d seen before. I crossed paths with the Queen of Latrines after making an accidental discovery in Ephesus (in what is now Turkey), which grew to prominence around the second century C.E. “There’s a lot you can find out about a culture when you look at how they managed their toilets,” Koloski-Ostrow says. For the past 25 years, she has taken that label literally, spending much of her time in ancient Roman gutters. “I live my life in the gutter,” says Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow with a chuckle.Īn anthropologist at Brandeis University, she considers her “official” title the Queen of Latrines. Photo illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos via Getty Images and Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Massimo The Roman elite viewed public toilets as an instrument that flushed the filth of the plebes out of their noble sight.
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