My paradigm shift is the evolution of human waste disposal systems, what we know today as the toilet. I will explore how we dealt with our (hopefully) daily business from the advent of the toilet to the modern day. Much like the pipes of our contemporary sewage systems, this story takes many twists and turns, sometimes even heading to the rear.

I will start in the Greco-Roman age, when the first innovation resembling a flushable toilet came popped out into the world. Their vast system of aqueducts fed water into channels beneath public latrines which took the waste away from its creator and into a local body of water. My investigation will then turn to Medieval Europe, where most Greek and Roman knowledge was lost for centuries. Here, the feudal lords used garderobes, or holes which opened into the moats of their castles, while townsmen and peasants would be dumping their waste onto the streets for centuries. Around 1600, Sir John Harrington created the earliest model of the modern flushable toilet (with cistern included in the bowl), but the s-shaped odor-reducing pipe did not exist to popularize it until the mid-19th century. Throughout the 20 and 21st centuries, other innovations, such as reduced flow and toilet paper rolls have vastly improved the device.

This shift merits my attention because this technology is a commonplace that underlies all of our daily doings but goes largely unnoticed due to its pervasive nature. Neglecting the fascinating history of this wonderful gadget will send thousands of years of hard work down the drain. In school, our brains become constipated with “sophisticated knowledge,” like literature, physics, and calculus, yet there is a decisive lack of practical learning –  the type we could use during an apocalypse. During an end of the world scenario, a plumber would become filthy rich while a poet finds himself shit outta luck.