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
The water did often have nasty bugs in it. People often needed to have 5 or 6 children to get two surviving to adulthood. That said people also usually traveled much less and for shorter distances. Odds are, unless you lived in a city, by the time you grew up you were immune to the bacteria in the water near your home. Bad epidemics mostly happened in cities, especially those with foreign traders visiting.
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