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There was another article of this sort too. I'm curious about how soap itself originated though. It's alright if someone somewhere had an 'aha' moment and started using soap for hygeine, but for practically the whole world to use it, something interesting must've been happening?

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I grew up on a farm. A pig farm. Between getting home from school and eating dinner, I had chores to do, in the pig barns. I usually came back from chores with pig shit all over my hands.

If I hadn't had soap to wash my hands before biting into my hamburger, I probably would have invented it.

Considering it wasn't that long ago (historically) that virtually all of the worlds population was agrarian, I suspect being dirty was a fairly strong motivation for the invention of soap.

In the comments he clarifies that he still washes his hands with soap.

People were generally pretty dirty back in the day... You're going to struggle to get grease/oil off you without something like soap. Remember high school science and learning to make soap, how it worked, etc?

I can imagine showering without soap (I already don't bother with shampoo) but you'd probably want to keep it around for washing your hands after cleaning the house, gardening, working on anything greasy+, etc.

+ cue jokes about hair without shampoo...

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