I remember my dad telling stories of having to watch out for people tossing “night soil” out second and third story windows in Italy when he was in the Navy, circa early fifites.
It’s sort of comical, how many people seem to believe that other countries had some medieval system that was much different. Feudalism was the rule, not the exception.
If you believe that some humans are more evolved than others then Feudalism actually makes a lot of sense.