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Sewage has been a big disposal problem for a long time.  But not so for ancient Crete.   “That’s nice,” you say, “but where the heck is Crete in the first place?”

Crete is the second largest island in the eastern Mediterranean after Cyprus, and it is located off the coast of Greece.  Why do we care?  We care because some 5000 years ago, Crete developed the same sewage system that we are using in the western world today.  Well, not the same one exactly, but the same one in concept.

Early plumbers around 3000 BC took advantage of the craggy mountainside and steeply sloped area around Knossos, their capital city.  They designed a drainage system with a network of clay pipes, manholes, and intricate connections running anywhere from one to ten feet underground.  Lateral piping was connected from the sewer main to the royal palace, the local inns, many homes in the city, and public facilities used to wash feet and bathe legs. They then used gravity to feed rain water they collected in cisterns or vats on top of the structures and directed the effluent to the nearby river or out to sea.

Archeologists have discovered sinks, lavatories, and an elegantly appointed bathroom in the queen’s quarters.  This was covered with adornments and a beautifully decorated bathtub.  The used water was simply dumped into a drain in the floor and sent on its way to the sewer and drainage system. 

The bad news is that Crete (or Minoa as it was known at the time) did not endure, and its marvelous engineering was lost to the world for millennia to come.  Volcanoes and earthquakes caused the ultimate collapse of a peaceful, mercantile nation and destroyed a city most notable for its great plumbing.  After the nation collapsed around 1500 BC or some 3500 years ago, the technology was lost. We don’t find it again until the 1600’s when a similar system was introduced in Europe.