Rise and fall of civilisations seen via rubbish

LIKE most Capetonians, I send my weekly discards on a long and expensive journey to a waste management facility or landfill beyond the urban fringes. Cape Town is served by three landfill sites, the largest is at Vissershok, 30km from the city. It covers 117 hectares and will form an enormous mountain of garbage 65m above ground level when complete. Once decommissioned, it will be covered with expensive topsoil and rehabilitated using indigenous vegetation. The other sites are at Muizenberg and Bellville South.

The history and study of garbage (also known as rubbish, trash or waste) is fascinating. Without it, we would know little about prehistory, the rise and fall of past civilisations or the daily lives of rich and poor throughout the millennia.

Let’s start with disposal methods, which fall into four basic categories: dumping, burning, recycling and minimisation. Humans have generally been careless about dealing with their rubbish, manure and human waste, not realising until comparatively recently there was a link between filth, contaminated water and disease.

Hunter-gatherers disposed of waste as they travelled and had the option of moving their camps to avoid pollution, but problems arose when populations began to crowd into cities with scant provision for sanitation and garbage pits. Incombustible rubbish was left where it fell. Fortunately, volumes were small and almost everything biodegradable.

The people of the great city of Knossos in Crete dug deep holes 5 000 years ago which they filled and covered. Some experts claim they were rubbish pits but others believe they were used to store grain.

It’s been estimated that the street level of ancient Troy rose by about 1.5 metre per century because of the accumulation of rubbish. This is why the site is a mound with nine clear levels of occupation (rebuilt cities) covering 3 000 years. The Athenians were more organised – they prohibited dumping in the streets in about 500BCE and established sites 1.5km outside the city for disposal.

Problems caused by rotting carcasses and slops were less acute in the dry Middle East than in damper European climates. The Romans (leaders in water and sanitary engineering) were less particular about their trash, which was apparently thickly strewn in the streets and cemeteries of Pompeii, where indoor waste pits crammed with broken pottery, animal bones, grape seeds and olive pits were found flanking a domestic water cistern.

Mounds of garbage next to the defensive walls of 15th century Paris placed it at serious risk of assault. Elsewhere in Europe, pigs, dogs, vermin and insects devoured rubbishthrown out of windows and doors, including offal, scraps and bones. This led to periodic outbreaks of diseases such as plague, cholera and typhoid fever which killed thousands.

More next week.