A bathroom is a room for personal hygiene activities, generally containing at minimum a toilet and sink. A bathroom may also contain a mirror, a bathtub or a shower, and possibly also a bidet. In North America and some other regions, it characteristically contains at least a toilet and a sink; hence in North American English the word "bathroom" is commonly used to mean any room containing a toilet, even a public toilet (although in the United States this is more commonly called a restroom). In other countries, including the UK, Australia, France, eastern Europe and Japan, homes may have a separate toilet room. In Iran almost all homes have two distinct rooms for the bathroom and the toilet room. Bathrooms often have one or more towel bars or towel rings for hanging towels. Some bathrooms contain a medicine cabinet for personal hygiene products and medicines and drawers or shelves for storing towels and other items. All forms of bathroom lighting should be IP44 rated as safe to use in the bathroom.
The first records for the use of baths date back as far as 3000 B.C. At this time water had a strong religious value, being seen as a purifying element for both body and soul, and so it was not uncommon for people to be required to cleanse themselves before entering a sacred area. Baths are recorded as part of a village or town life throughout this period, with a split between steam baths in Europe and America and cold baths in Asia. Communal baths were erected in a distinctly separate area to the living quarters of the village.The third millennium B.C. was the "Age of Cleanliness." Toilets and sewers were invented in several parts of the world, and Mohenjo-Daro circa 2800 B.C. had some of the most advanced, with lavatories built into the outer walls of houses. These were "Western-style" toilets made from bricks with wooden seats on top. They had vertical chutes, through which waste fell into street drains or cesspits. Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the director general of archaeology in India from 1944 to 1948, wrote, "The high quality of the sanitary arrangements could well be envied in many parts of the world today.
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