2,000-year-old toilet bowl found in Roman ruins — revealing ancient health issue

Archaeologists recently opened up a can of worms — well, sort of.

When analyzing an ancient Roman toilet bowl, they found it was filled with the remains of parasitic roundworms.

The discovery, which sheds light on public health issues in the Roman Empire, was documented in a preprint study posted May 10 to the Social Science Research Network.

The toilet bowl, a wide-brimmed stone vessel, was unearthed at the ruins of Viminacium, located about 50 miles southeast of Belgrade. The site once served as the capital of the Roman province of Moesia Superior.

The ruins are believed to be of a “luxury building” that contained a public bath.

The bowl, which was unearthed near public toilets, dates to the third century A.D., making it at least 1,700 years old.

Inside the bowl, archaeologists found the mineralized eggs of intestinal nematode roundworms, marking “the first time that parasite eggs have been identified from concretions inside a Roman stone vessel.”

The finding suggests the vessel once contained human excrement.

The bowl itself likely was not used as a toilet or chamber pot, but it may have held sanitary products, archaeologists said.

Ancient Romans used a sponge on a stick, known as a tersorium, to wipe themselves — and it is likely that these were placed in the bowl.

The discovery indicates that the Romans, despite taking sanitation seriously, still were at risk of parasitic infections.

“One of the possible causes is that the heated communal waters of the Roman baths served as a transmission medium for whipworm (Trichuris sp.) and roundworm (Ascaris sp.) eggs,” archaeologists said.

This story was originally published May 16, 2024 at 5:21 PM with the headline "2,000-year-old toilet bowl found in Roman ruins — revealing ancient health issue."