W.L. Rathje

What is the world’s oldest profession? If you answered "prostitution," you’re wrong. In fact, the most likely title-holder is "making a living from reducing, reusing, and recycling" or, in today’s PC terms, "making a living by preventing garbage"!

Garbage and humankind have been intimately related for quite a while–in fact, from the very beginning. The earliest "hominids" are identified as such by the first stone tools and tool manufacturing debris they left behind. In other words, what makes the first humans "human" is making garbage!

It might sound simplistic–after all, the first humans millions of years ago were not rocket scientists–but "reuse" began as soon as a tool was employed to cut, chop, scrape, or whatever on a second occasion, either at a later time in the same place or at a different place where the tool had to be brought with the forethought of "reusing" it. Actually, for these hominids, such behavior was a breakthrough comparable to rocket science.

No one knows for sure when such reuse started, mainly because human-made tools and ornaments constructed of perishable materials, such as wood, have disappeared long ago. Most of humanity’s first 2 million years is called the Paleolithic or "Old Stone Age." Appropriately enough, the vast majority of artifacts made during this period that archaeologists recover and analyze are stone tools. The specific composition of the stone artifact and the exact way it was knapped (or shaped by striking with a stone, bone, or antler hammer) reveal a great deal about how resources were exploited and conserved.

As a result, at Olduvai Gorge in Kenya (made famous by the Leakey family discoveries), the Omo Basin in Ethiopia, and other regions containing early hominid sites, archaeologists have convincingly documented that, by 1 million years ago, many tools were found several miles or more from the source of the stone from which they were knapped.

Archaeologists also have determined that the concept of reuse of stone tools was refined by the invention of "retouch" techniques: rather sophisticated methods that employed bone and antler tools to skillfully apply pressure to resharpen the edge of tools that became dulled from use.

Recycling–which by definition requires some kind of change to take place in an artifact, such as remanufacture–began as soon as a tool broke (unintentional remanufacture) and someone picked up a piece or fragment to use. For example, if a good-size flake were chipped off a chopping tool during use, that piece might be retrieved to scrape the flesh and blood from hides to turn them into clothes or some other useful artifacts. Again, no one knows exactly when this form of behavior began, but archaeologists have identified signs of intentional remanufacture on stone tools dating as far back as 1 million years ago.

Source reduction began as soon as some early humans ventured any significant distance from a natural stone source and carried stone tools or "blanks" (chunks of stone to manufacture into tools in the future) with them. An excellent exemplar of extreme source reduction is the stone tools found on Middle Europe’s windswept grasslands. Elsewhere, at hunting kill sites and at base camps with stone sources nearby, excavators often find significant numbers of large and still-functional implements. In contrast, most of what the earliest high plains drifters left for archaeologists was virtually unusable stone fragments that had been through the entire litany of reuse and recycling and had nothing left to give. The few still-usable tools recovered were most often diminutive in size, made small to conserve the stone that people had to carry with them. Finding only one of these mini-artifacts gives rise to great thanksgiving at an archaeological dig camp.

Early humans were hunters and gatherers who moved from place to place to take advantage of the seasonal round of natural stands of ripening fruits and vegetables and the migration habits of the animals they hunted. Because they had to carry everything with them on their frequent relocations, our most ancient ancestors’ possessions and discards were relatively few. Besides, our earliest ancestors always had a simple solution to their refuse problem: When the garbage became too deep or smelled too strong, they just moved away. Once people settled down in farming communities (beginning about 11,000 years ago) and "civilizations" with cities (beginning about 5,000 years ago), the problem became more vexing. Instead of people moving away from their garbage, the garbage had to be moved away from the people. Hence the first refuse collectors.

Historians of public works record AD 1543 as the year that "Roger the Raker" was recorded as a garbage collector in Bristol, England, but the collection and transport of discards has a far more venerable history. From almost as early as there are any records, cities are associated with scavengers. Discards were usually thrown into the streets where degradable garbage was eaten by dogs or pigs or left to rot. Relatively small, nondegradable items became part of the thoroughfares and their borders. Scavengers removed larger discards to the outskirts of habitation in exchange for the privilege to keep any of the castoffs they coveted. This made a considerable contribution to reducing traffic problems in the first urban centers.

Whether officially employed or not, scavengers–rag pickers 100 years ago and scrap dealers today–have been a fixture of human society ever since. As an archaeologist, it is sad but true for me to say that scavenging has been a curse. At any battle site, archaeologists are enthralled by the specter of finding spear points and pieces of chain mail at the positions predicted by history or legend. Perhaps the most disappointed were the British archaeologists who excavated the reputed site of the Battle of Hastings, where William the Conqueror’s Normans decimated King Harold’s Anglo-Saxons, on the battle’s 900^th anniversary in 1966. The historical treasure trove they recovered consisted of a few human and horse teeth that survived the scavengers and the forces of nature.

For a chilling explanation, watch Peter Watkin’s 1964 BBC docudrama called Battle of Culloden. After the deciding clash between the Scottish Clans and British troops on April 16, 1746, virtually all the dead were picked clean of weapons, armor, valuables, and clothing, down to the last memento, by the ubiquitous camp followers, both professional scavengers and ladies of the night. Then the bodies were neatly stacked in large piles and set ablaze.

Relative to conservation, don’t forget that Geoffrey Chaucer, the esteemed author of the 12^th century classic Canterbury Tales, earned his daily bread by keeping track of England’s scrap iron for his king.

I was reminded of the rich heritage of the garbage industry when I watched "Junkyards," one recent installment in the Modern Marvels series on the History Channel. It provided clear evidence that the world’s oldest profession is one of its most honorable.

Garbage people, rejoice! 

Archeologist W.L. Rathje is founder and director of the Garbage Project.

MSW - July/August 2002