A Brief History of Composting: From Ancient Egypt to Your Backyard

You know what’s funny about composting? We treat it like some trendy new sustainability thing. Like someone on TikTok just invented putting banana peels in a bin. But people have been doing this for literally thousands of years. Chapter 1 of Kim Pezza’s Backyard Farming: Composting lays out the full timeline, and honestly, some of it is wild.

Nobody Knows Who Started It

Here’s the thing about composting history: nobody can agree on when it actually began. Some researchers point to the Neolithic, Bronze, or Iron Ages in Scotland. The earliest written evidence comes from clay tablets during the Akkadian Dynasty (around 2320 to 2120 BCE), which mention using manure as fertilizer. The Bible and Talmud both reference manure, rotted straw, and something that sounds a lot like compost tea.

Ancient Chinese farmers used cooked bones and silkworm debris. The Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians all buried used straw from animal stalls. So basically, every major civilization figured out the same thing independently: rotting stuff makes plants grow better.

Not exactly a shocking discovery when you think about it. Walk through a forest. The ground is literally made of decomposed leaves and fallen trees. Nature has been composting since before humans existed. We just eventually noticed and started doing it on purpose.

Cleopatra Was Seriously Into Worms

Okay, this is the part that got me. Roman General Cato wrote about composting way back around 234 to 149 BCE in his book De Agri Cultura. That’s the first known recording of worms being used in composting. Cool fact, sure.

But then there’s Cleopatra. She declared earthworms sacred. Sacred! She made it illegal to remove them from Egypt. The punishment? Death. You could literally be executed for smuggling worms out of the country.

Let that sink in. In 2026, we argue about plastic straws. Cleopatra was out here issuing death sentences over worm protection. Say what you want about her methods, but the woman understood soil biology thousands of years before anyone wrote a textbook about it.

Native Americans Had Multiple Techniques

Native Americans developed several composting approaches that were genuinely clever. Sheet composting involved spreading organic material directly over soil. They also practiced composting while planting, placing fish parts and animal remains directly into seed holes. Then there were seed balls, where seeds got packed into clay mixed with compostable materials.

When European settlers arrived, they adopted some of these ideas. They used fish as fertilizer in a ratio of about 10 parts muck to 1 part fish. Composting was just normal farming knowledge back then.

And some pretty famous Americans were really into it. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all composted. George Washington Carver was a major advocate too. These weren’t fringe hippies. They were presidents and one of the most respected agricultural scientists in American history.

Then Chemistry Showed Up

In 1840, a German scientist named Justus von Liebig proved that plants get nourishment from chemical solutions in the soil. This was a legitimate scientific breakthrough. But it also kicked off a massive shift toward chemical fertilizers. Why spend months composting when you can just add chemicals?

Here’s how it works with trends: something natural gets replaced by something industrial, everyone celebrates the convenience, and then decades later people start noticing the downsides. Composting fell out of fashion. Chemical fertilizers took over.

The Composting Comeback

The revival started with Sir Albert Howard around 1905. He developed the “Indore method” in India and discovered that the best compost had about three times more green matter than manure. He used sandwich-style layers, which is basically what everyone still recommends today.

Other Europeans picked up the torch. Rudolf Steiner pushed biodynamics. Anne France-Harrar and Lady Eve Balfour advocated for organic methods. In the US, J.I. Rodale brought Howard’s work to American audiences and created Organic Gardening magazine, which ran until 2015.

Then in the 1960s, Scott and Helen Nearing inspired the “back to the land” movement. Composting became countercultural. It was the sustainable, anti-establishment thing to do.

And now? It’s coming back again. Consumers want fewer chemicals in their food and on their lawns. Cities are starting municipal composting programs. Instagram is full of aesthetic compost bin setups.

Composting Goes In and Out of Fashion

So here’s what happened: humans composted for thousands of years because it obviously worked. Then we got excited about chemistry and abandoned it. Then some smart people reminded us that soil health actually matters. Then we forgot again. Now we’re remembering again.

Composting keeps cycling through popularity like low-rise jeans. But the science never changed. Decomposition works the same way it did when Cleopatra was protecting her worms. The only thing that changes is whether we pay attention.

The next chapter gets into what composting actually is and why you should care about it. Which is useful, because knowing the history is interesting, but knowing how to actually do it is the whole point.

This post is part of a series retelling Kim Pezza’s Backyard Farming: Composting with my own commentary and reactions.

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