I am not anything close to an ecologist or a biologist so this question may be really dumb. But I know that water is essential. It is used in many important bodily processes and we would die without it very quickly.
So my question is, how did so many generations of humans survive without the water purification standards that we have today?
Is there a reasonable amount of dirt, toxins, bacteria, etc… that can be in water and it won’t make us sick?
I also know people have boiled water for a very long time but didn’t we only discover bacteria and viruses in the lasts several hundred years? Did people know that boiling water would purify it?
Also am I wrong for thinking that most water in nature is dangerous to drink?
Hopefully these questions make sense.
In: 1437
An important thing to note here is: anything that kills humans after birthing age (lets say 35+) wont really affect us from an evolutionary standpoint. So in that regard we are very resilient as a species to toxins and other things that kills slowly overtime.
Also many things from drinking “bad” water makes you sick because you as a traveler are unused to local bacteria. But humans didnt travel that much in prehistory. Even during the great migrations ppl generally lived and died in a very local area. It wasnt some great constant wandering.
Also helps that the average woman had like 5+ children aswell. even with something really high like 25% infant mortality rate the species still propagated.
Just a bare minimum of only drinking moving water makes it much safer for early humans. And overall the water was cleaner back then. You atleast didnt have to worry as much about 8billion other humans throwing refined metals and chemicals in your watersupply.
Latest Answers