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
Mostly this is a matter of CAN get sick vs will get sick. There’s a chance that drinking from a stream, river or lake will make you sick on any given time. But most of those sickness aren’t life threatening and the ones that did didn’t kill enough to stop humans from reproducing in sufficient numbers.
We also have the ability to recognize non visible factors, like this specific water causes bad sickness, don’t drink it. And we communicate it to other members of our species effectively.
Latest Answers