Ok.... let me qualify. Yes the Babylonians and likely the Romans and the Chinese had some product involving animals fats mixed with ashes that likely can be called 'soap' since they used it for washing the human body. But go back and read the lead in to the discussion..... in this piece, we are talking about washing dishes. So, I thought the point should have been apparent that when I said that "soap is a very recent invention", it was dishwashing (or liquid detergent) soap that was being referred to since that was the point of the discussion. And THAT is indeed a very recent invention... provided that anything under 200 years can qualify as recent. In fact, Wikipedia seems to indicate that the manufacturing of liquid dish detergent didn't commence until the middle of the 20th century so actually less than 100 years... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwashing_liquid