How do people deal with their personal hygiene before toilet paper was available? Since paper was not invented until much later in history, it depended on where you lived and what kind of the material was reachable. River water, leaves, hay, rag, stone,sand and hand were on the tool list of cleansing your bottom. In coastal area, mussel shells were quite popular. In Indian and Arab world, left hands and three stones . In Hawaii, the coconut shell . In ancient Roman, poor people used public restroom, the solution in it was a sponge on a L-shaped stick, soaking in salt water , which you had to share with everybody and the stick change only one time a day. The wealthy used the much softer and more comfortable wool soaked in rosewater . Fast forward to colonial America, the material of choice was corn cob until newspaper was widely available around 1,700. In the late 19th century, the Sear catalog became a popular choice because of its absorbent material until they started printi...