If early humans found out that if they cooked meat it was better for them, why did it take thousands of years for us to find out about germs?
In: Biology
Few different things there, cooking food doesn’t just kill germs or toxins but actually made it easier for nu’s to digest.
As for the delay in discovering germ theory, you have to understand science as we know it is only a few centuries old. So the idea of tiny living creatures smaller than the eye can see would be pretty novel.
Superstition influenced early humanity, so instead of microbes, you probably got sick after eating raw pork because God is punishing you for associating with filthy animals.
Then you had “naturalist” answers, you know the smart thinkers, who thought about cause and effect. These people observed their world and used their understanding to make sense of things. So maybe raw meat is poisonous, and cooking it neutralizes the poison. So you start roasting your captured birds, and lo and behold no one gets sick, looks like you solved that issue!
And when someone asks the wise guru why cooking chicken makes it safe to eat, the wise one says “cooking removes the poison!” And then future wise gurus observe the same thing and figure that makes sense so it becomes the widespread truth.
Then “medical science” springboards from there, so we start looking at health from a perspective of balancing the humors in the body, you know, after all we can tell alot about our health from the colour of our blood, mucous, vomit, and shit. And that kind of answers a bunch of questions, eating raw chicken makes the shit wrong, so we need to rebalance the body, bit cooking the chicken means the shit and bile is normal, so there must be something in the raw chicken thst is lost when it is cooked, and that must be the source if ombalancing the liquids. Remember, there was a tike letting leaches drink your blood was good for you! Remember, evolution is sometimes just looking for “good enough”, so sure maybe there were some logical leaps to make drilling a hole in your head make sense, it still kinda provided an answer.
And then someone noticed something, dirty wounds get infected, but cleaned wounds don’t, ah the dirt must be affecting the blood resulting in an imbalance of the humors again, get the leaches!
But what about dirty wounds sours the blood? Tiny Tiny creatures eating and shitting, invisible to the eye, that make no sound? Absurd, until one day understanding changes, someone gets a new perspective and suddenly the tiny tiny creatures are seen, and thst clears up a bunch if questions.
Even today WITH Germ theory, biology, and The Magic School Bus grown adults think rubbing crystals on their body will heal them, or injecting bleach will kill a virus, or maybe a horse dewormer will help you, or maybe you need to add turmeric to your food to fight inflammation or maybe your liver needs a cleanse so you can only eat brocoli for three days. And in some ways, some things are partially right even if only due to the placebo effect, and that is enough for people who know better to ignore the science. So is it any surprise our ancestors were just as susceptible to miscomprehension?
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