hygiene

Perhaps prehistoric women did not have their period as often as nowadays. In times of lack of food, during pregnancy and the lengthy period of breast feeding, they didn't get bleeding...

Papyrus was probably the only type of paper the Romans used, but for cleaning their behinds the Romans had a softer option. A sponge on a stick was the easy solution to this pressing problem...

Rose water was used extensively in the Middle Ages in the upper class kitchen. Nowadays, it is still an important ingredient in the India and Surinam kitchen. It adds a tender aroma to dishes...

The Romans didn’t use soap: they cleaned themselves with olive oil and some sand to remove dead skin cells. Soap supposedly is a Gallic or Germanic invention...

Contraception aids are hardly known from Prehistory. The Greek and Romans used different ways of not getting pregnant: medicines, special positions, periodical abstinence, as well as amulets. If this failed, even then they already used abortion...

In the Middle Ages, every house needed to have a secrete (toilet). Ordinary folk usually had it in their back yard. Underneath, a hole was dug which regularly needed to be emptied. The contents was used by farmers as fertiliser...

That is difficult to answer because: what is stinking actually? It smelled different in a medieval town than nowadays. Almost all houses had a fire place where wood was burnt. Poor people would burn turf (smells more)...

Yes, they did. For example special razors were made in the Bronze Age (but before that people may have cut their beards and hair with stone tools which we cannot recognise)...

Certainly, the earliest Neolithic houses had smooth floors from fine clay stamped down (it was not simply the stamped down surface of the ground but a layer of...