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
Drinking unpurified water in wilderness is a sure recipe to getting parasites, if not the first time, then sooner or later, and most wild animals indeed have infections of flatworms, etc. And yes, it does often result in death and certainly in reduced life expectancy.
But that is why humans in pre-modern times had 6-8 children per woman, on average! Without resulting in a runaway population boom. Most simply didn’t make it for one reason or other.
Modern humans are in a way exceptional in that a newborn can reasonably expect to die of old age. That’s not really the case for most animals. If in the wild they live long enough to procreate without anything making lunch of them, they have already done better than most of their litter.
Latest Answers