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How did people manage before TP?:
The body predates both toilets and toilet paper, and is intended to function without either. Before toilet paper, many people simply used a hand; others used leaves, discarded sheep's wool, coconut shells, and even snow. Sitting's historical exclusivity implies that the masses usually squatted, and that wiping was more common among the sitting classes. History is littered with the extravagencies of the wealthy wiper: lace, wool and rosewater, and even the downy neck of a duck.
Wikipedia adds more pre-TP options:
Wealthy people wiped with wool, lace or hemp, while less wealthy people used their hand when defecating into rivers, or cleaned themselves with various materials such as rags, wood shavings, leaves, grass, hay, stone, sand, moss, water, snow, maize, ferns, may apple plant husks, fruit skins, or seashells, and corn cobs, depending upon the country and weather conditions or social customs. In Ancient Rome, a sponge on a stick was commonly used, and, after usage, placed back in a bucket of saltwater.
I am a little jealous of the downy neck of duck, but grateful to be living in the golden age of quilted, scented, perforated, medicated, multi-ply, etc.
Whom do we have to thank for this lovely invention?
As sitting became more common, so too did the messes left behind, and so too did the economic reward for providing comfortable, affordable wiping products. A decade before Thomas Twyford made the toilet easier to clean by encasing it in porcelain, the Gayetty firm of New Jersey produced the first modern toilet paper to provide that same ease of cleaning to our beleaguered bungholes. For fifty cents, users purchased five hundred sheets of Gayetty's aloe-soaked "Therapeutic Paper" for their cleaning comfort. In 1890, the Scott Paper Company became the first company to manufacture toilet paper on a roll.
[I checked and $0.50 in 1857 = $11.38 today (for 500 sheets).]
Because of the shame and embarrassment surrounding pooping, TP's early adoption was slow and awkward:
Victorian-mandated sitting toilets created much of the demand for toilet paper, but Victorian etiquette in America wouldn't allow anyone to talk about it. With no national ad campaign and no newspaper articles, nothing gave Americans a uniform introduction to the product. Discussions about the new product and techniques for its use took place only among intimates, if at all. As time went on, the brands did begin advertising, but euphemistically and vaguely to avoid directly confronting the taboos.
And it's still awkward today:
Teddy bears and fluffy clouds abound, but straightforward discussion of the product's functionality is still conspicuously absent.
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Is this, as I said, the Golden Age of wiping, or are we still in the Stone Age?
I'd say maybe the latter, because when you think about it, it seems odd and inefficient that we are still using paper which requires contortions, effort, and messiness, and only serves to smear. Why not instead use water? Plenty of our Europeans friends already do in the form of "bidets":
There are two different kinds of bidets, vertical and horizontal. The vertical bidet creates a small fountain in the middle of the bowl; the horizontal shoots water across it. In either case, the user, while facing the appliance, sits or squats to maneuver the contaminated area into the stream. Drying with toilet paper or a towel follows, and you're on your way.
Moreover, cleaning up with paper instead of water is inconsistent with general hygienic practice.
Given an American obsession with cleanliness that far exceeds most European standards, it's odd that we haven't embraced bidets wholeheartedly. It is inconsistent with general practice: if you poop on your arm, you'd wash it off, not smear it off. And yet, for the butt, we're content to smear.
Praeger adds this jab/marketing-tip:
Probably "bidet" sounds too much like "ballet" -- too effeminate (or too French) for Americans to latch on. Market it as a "buttsink" and watch bidet sales soar.
Even bidets may eventually look ancient when you compare them to potential technologies to come:
A trip to Japan reveals a toilet that may portend the future of pooping: toilet seats that heat up automatically; nozzles that push out, spray you with warm water, and retract; and toilets with speakers to mimic the sound of flushing water to hide the sound of your splatters. On the drawing board are plumbing that recycles water from sinks and showers into the toilet tank, toilet seats that flow in the dark, lids that lift after an infrared sensor detects an approaching user, and a toilet that can measure weight, body fact, blood pressure, and urine and stool content, and email the results to your doctor.
