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→Early History of Sanitation
Sanitation is evident in the earliest settled societies. In the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, and Iran, evidence exists for the use of sewers and clay pipes for removing human waste. With ceramics being present in societies by 7500-7000 BCE, this technology became utilized for making clay pipes could safely transport waste. By the Neolithic in the Near East in the 7th and 6th millennia, vertical shafts were used for waste disposal and wells had begun to be utilized within villages.
In the 3rd millennium BCE, clay pipes now extended into sewer systems within structures. In the Indus, urban planning included public sewers are evident at sites such as Lothal. Mohenjo-daro in the Indus may have developed the first toilets with seats and shaped as something similar to Western-style toilets. In Mesopotamia, at about the same time, sewers with clay pipes were used, although the system does not seem to be centralized. Rather, houses would have vertical shafts that would send waste far below a house. Alternative systems moved waste and waster water out of structures and into larger drains or cesspits. By the second millennium BCE, toilets could be found in Southern Europe, Southeast Asia, Near East, Central Asia, India, China, and Southeast Asia. The Minoan city of Knossos in Crete had, by this time, developed a system that brought clean water, on the one hand, and an alternative system that took waste water away from the city, including developing a storm sewage canals for overflow during heavy rains.
==Late Antiquity of Sanitation==