Nowadays the prospect of weeks on end without bathing seems unthinkable and un-smellable. But as the University of Virginia details, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman nose went from regal to wrinkled after bathing fell out of fashion. Using limited technology and resources to make soap and dedicating water to dirt removal weren’t exactly high priorities for people trying to rise from the rubble of a ruined empire. Later, Christians would frown on bathing, calling it an unnecessary earthly indulgence and making the phrase “cleanliness is close to godliness” historically ironic. Doctors also had backwards opinions on bathing, believing it “was harmful” and potentially “dangerous” until the advent of germ theory changed their minds.

But not everybody has a nose for modern views on cleanliness. One of those undoubtedly sturdy noses belongs to an Iranian villager named Amou Haji, a man who not only pooh-poohs bathing but smokes animal poo, per UPI. He even eats “the rotten meat of dead porcupines.” You might also expect him to eat skunk butts, but that might be too on the nose even for him. So what underlies Haji’s extremely unclean behavior?

The world's dirtiest man made a clean break from his village

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