Ancient Toilet Unearthed in Jerusalem Shows Elite Were Plagued by Intestinal Worms
Mineralized feces chock-full of parasitic eggs indicate that it wasn’t the lower classes alone who suffered from certain infectious diseases

About two years ago, while building a new visitor center in Armon Hanatziv Promenade, an outlook in Jerusalem known for its beautiful vistas, construction workers dug up remains of a fine ancient structure. After examining fragments of exquisite balustrades and elegant window frames, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority determined that they once belonged to a palace or a luxury villa built in the mid-7th century B.C.E. “The fragments were of the finest quality ever found in Israel,” says Ya’akov Billig, who leads the excavation efforts at the Antiquities Authority. But as they dug further, the team was in for an even greater treat—a prehistoric latrine. And even more excitingly, the researchers’ newfound archaeological gem held what the ancient toilet-goers left behind: mineralized poop.

The Iron Age toilets are indeed a rare find, in part because few families had them—most individuals did their business in the bush—and in part because these usually simple structures did not survive very long. But those that stood the test of time are a trove of information about our ancestors, including their diets, health problems and potentially even their medicinal substances, says microarchaeologist Dafna Langgut of Tel Aviv University. She studies microscopic remnants the naked eye can’t see. After peering into the prehistoric poop for cues about the individuals who produced it, she came up with a curious conclusion: While the palace residents lived in a luxury villa surrounded by a lush garden, they suffered from debilitating parasitic infections that gave them stomach aches, nausea, diarrhea and other ills. Langgut’s team described their findings in the International Journal of Paleopathology, along with a theory of why these infections may have been so widespread that everyone was affected.