If you’ve been in the trades for any length of time, you have been made aware, sometimes acutely aware, that plumbers are not held in as high esteem as perhaps doctors, bank managers, investment counselors, lawyers or other professionals. The average person today is unaware of the fact that our trade is directly responsible for saving civilization; not once, but many times in the last 8,000 years. In fact, as author W. Hodding Carter, in his 2006 book “Flushed: How Plumbing Saved Civilization” so pointedly notes: “The unsung hero of human history was, of course, the Brain of Drains, the Hub of Tubs, the Power of Showers, the Brewer of Sewers ... the humble plumber." Further, Carter states, should we experience a global nuclear holocaust, plumbers will be civilization’s “knight in droopy jeans.”
In the beginning
Since Homo sapiens first appeared on the planet, the handling of sewerage waste has been an issue. Initially, when humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, it was easy to move around and there was no need to dispose of human waste. Much as the animals they hunted, humans simply “did their business” whenever and wherever they were when nature called, and nature did the rest.
About 10,000 years ago (there are some archeologists who contend that it was more like 15,000 years ago, but I have no dog in that fight) people began to farm and to domesticate animals. Gradually, these small groups began to coalesce and the first permanent settlements appeared. Now the problems of waste disposal had to be dealt with. The more people in one place (not to mention livestock) the dirtier things became.
After learning not to drink downstream of the herds (or village), humans began their long climb up the ladder of civilization. With the advent of communities and a steady food supply, it became possible for some members of the tribe to find time for other pursuits. Dealing with the problems attendant with waste disposal was probably not as important to our early ancestors as irrigation and water drainage from storms and floods, so the first “plumbers” (a word [“plumberium”] not associated with our trade until the Roman empire) were most likely the guys who figured out how to make the water go where it was desired and leave when it was not.
As their skill level advanced, their abilities became indispensable to the community. How about those guys who figured out how to get water to, and drainage from, the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon?” Research it! The systems were equal to anything we can do today, without any history or the manufacturing support!
The skill levels evolve
There is ample historical evidence confirming the fact that, although personal and communal hygiene was not a big issue, the control of water was. If you are not into history, and have never heard of the Mycenaean civilization of the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, let me enlighten you. Some 3,000 years before Christ, the Mycenaean king’s palace boasted not only a complex drainage system, designed to collect rainwater for all the palace roof drains and transport it to cisterns though a series of clay and lead piping which ran under the palace floors, but it also had a drainage, waste and vent system for removing sewerage, domestic hot and cold water piping with gold and silver spigots that served elaborate baths, including beautifully designed and functional tubs (some of which would make today’s high end manufacturers envious), commodes and sinks.
The skill levels evidenced by early plumbers were astounding. Consider that our forebears had to not only design the systems; they had to manufacture every single thing that the system entailed. Not only did they have to run the piping, they had to make the piping, join the piping and make the spigots, commodes tubs and such that the piping systems attached to!
Two steps forward…three steps backward
There are older evidences of plumbing among earlier civilizations. Systems for the comfort of royalty and their chosen minions were known far and wide throughout the ancient world stretching from England to China. Advances in sanitation followed (or presaged) advances in civilization. It can be said with certainty that the plumber and his trade provided the knowledge and skill set necessary to provide hygienic and sanitary conditions in cities and towns throughout the civilized world, even if no one understood the connection between proper hygiene and disease. Just getting the smell out of the living quarters or stopping the rivers, lakes or rainwaters from flooding streets and fields was reason enough to praise the plumber.
As the trade became more and more specialized and more technical, the common people began to benefit as well. There have been drainage systems found in China, Sri Lanka, India, Israel and points west which connected to individual houses in what would be called the “common people’s” neighborhoods. These systems moved waste products to either cess pits or directly into rivers or other places far removed from the towns or cities.
The only problem with all these great technological advances is that they were fragile and easily lost. Wars, natural catastrophe’s (as was the case in Crete), and diseases served to almost destroy civilization not once, but many times in the last 10,000 years. Empires rose and fell; the “Dark Ages” came and went. The fall of Rome, Bubonic Plague, Ghengis Khan, the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization; all these events and more served to strip our ancestors of the knowledge that they had gained on the hard road to civilization, peace and prosperity. We have been on the upswing since the Renaissance.
Through it all, as lost knowledge was regained, our trade has been at the forefront of protecting our fellows from disease and provided comfortable living spaces in even the most meager of abodes. American Standard Corporation has a motto, coined in the years around the Great Depression, “The plumber protects the health of the nation.” That’s the truth.
The Brooklyn, N.Y.-born author is a retired third generation master plumber. He founded Sunflower Plumbing & Heating in Shirley, N.Y., in 1975 and A Professional Commercial Plumbing Inc. in Phoenix in 1980. He holds residential, commercial, industrial and solar plumbing licenses and is certified in welding, clean rooms, polypropylene gas fusion and medical gas piping. He can be reached at [email protected].