It was always thus ...

After writing last week about latrines -- everyone needs a clean place to take a dump -- it was a nice surprise to encounter an ancient Chinese solution to this human need at the Asian Art Museum.

The museum exhibits a replica of what the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) offered its nobility for this necessity:

As the exhibit notes explain, facilities for common people were nowhere near so elegant, resulting in a stench which provoked folk tales that dangerous demons hid in privies. Modern science would conclude that this wasn't altogether wrong.