2,200-year-old flush toilet — oldest ever found — unearthed at palace ruins in China
You step into the bathroom, do your business, flush the toilet, wash up and leave. The sequence of actions is habitual — mundane, really. You probably only think about your toilet when it doesn’t flush properly. However, as archaeologists in China were recently reminded, our porcelain potties were once their own kind of thrones.
Archaeologists were excavating two large palace buildings at the heart of Yueyang City, the Institute of Archaeology at the China Academy of Social Sciences said in a Wednesday, Feb. 15, news release via Xinhua News Agency. The Yueyang City site was used as a capital city under multiple ancient Chinese dynasties.
While excavating one of these buildings, archaeologists stumbled upon a toilet, the release said. They found part of an indoor toilet seat and pipe leading toward an outdoor sewage pit. The upper portion of the toilet was missing.
Reconstructing the toilet, researchers realized it had a “deceptively advanced” water flushing system similar to modern toilets, Fan Mingyang, a tools and design expert, told the Global Times.
“It is the first and only flush toilet to be ever unearthed in China,” archaeologist Liu Rui told China Daily. “Everybody at the site was surprised, and then we all burst into laughter.”
The flush toilet is anywhere from 2,200 years old to 2,400 years old, according to the release and China Daily.
The exact age is unknown because the ruined palace buildings were used for centuries, from midway into the Warring States Period to the beginning of the Han Dynasty, per the release. The Warring States Period began in 475 B.C. and the Han Dynasty began in 206 B.C., according to Britannica.
Still, the flush toilet is the oldest ever found, China Daily reported, with the invention of flush toilets previously being dated to the 16th century in England.
The toilet was considered a “luxury object” and only used by “very high-ranking members of (the) society,” Rui told China Daily. For every use, servants likely poured water into the toilet. Because the top is missing, researchers don’t know for sure whether users sat on the seat or squatted over it.
Pieces of the toilet were uncovered last summer and announced Feb. 15, China Daily reported.
In the same building where the toilet was found, archaeologists also uncovered four large semi-circular tiles, one at each corner, according to the release.
The Yueyang City site is located in the Yanliang district of Xi’an City, the capital of Shaanxi province. The district is about 840 miles northwest of Shanghai.
Google Translate and Baidu Translate were used to translate the news release form the Institute of Archaeology at the China Academy of Social Sciences
This story was originally published February 16, 2023 at 4:37 PM with the headline "2,200-year-old flush toilet — oldest ever found — unearthed at palace ruins in China."
