If you can get sick from drinking most of the water that you encounter, how have humans lived so long?

1.12K views

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

39 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Places where people invented or started to like to drink beer or tea were accidental havens for humans. We probably drank those drinks because of their deliciously and refreshingly mildly intoxicating addictiveness but accidentally stumbled across something great. When you make beer or tea you boil the water. This kills most nasties in the water. Suddenly people aren’t dying of diarrhoea left right and centre. People start to have time to build instead of struggling with a life of parasites. Civilisation starts.

You are viewing 1 out of 39 answers, click here to view all answers.