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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

Prices and taxes on urine were occasionally huge political issues in Ancient Rome.

For anyone curious why this was the case, it's due to a step in wool textile production called "fulling" [0]. Stale human urine was used for the ammonium, which cleaned away dirt and oil from the cloth and made it thicker (fuller).

One of the more entertaining episodes in Don Quijote is when he and Sancho are confused by the persistent loud noise made by the hammers in a fulling mill.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulling

Adding to this fun fact, they used urine because fulling societies hadn't yet invented soap. Cicero's family were fullers. Caesar, Cleopatra and Socrates lived in civilizations lacking soap!

Due to economics ? I thought Alep soap predated Cicero by a while.

It's unclear, though earliest even-dubious claims of its use go back only as far as Cleopatra, Cicero's contemporary [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_soap

"Money Doesn't Stink"

Maybe reintroducing a free modern amphora equivalent instead of making people pay and forcing them to waste it in a toilet could help?

Interestingly, elemental phosphorus was originally isolated from urine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus#Discovery

which is funny considering that economists and such are worried that mining phosphorus rock might have a limit soon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus

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