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
1. Throughout history a great many humans have died of diseases that are rare today, and many more have lived with chronic ailments contracted from drinking water.
2. Prehistoric humans did not live in cities; early cities were massive breeding grounds for disease, both because of the concentration of people that let diseases spread quickly once established and because sanitation standards were low by modern standards. (Even in modern slums with very low sanitary standards people know to take what precautions they can.)
3. While waterborne parasites can be in even the cleanest looking water, the most dangerous water to drink is from human-polluted or human-distrurbed waters.
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