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
A few things.
1. Drinking from untreated water is more dangerous than from treated sources, but it is not guaranteed that you will become ill if you do so.
2. Many early humans did die from unsafe drinking water; according to the NIH, 200kya ~75% of people died due to infection predominately caused by the lack of access to clean food and water. Average life expectancy was 33 years.
1. Even today as many as 3.5 million people die per annum due to lack of access to clean water
3. Some water sources are less dangerous than others, and early humans would have learned this fairly quickly. Ground water can be filtered by the soil, and running water will generally be less dangerous than others
1. Note; the presence of fast moving or ground water does not guarantee safety. You should always drink from a safer source when possible, or boil when not
4. Humans learned to boil water as early as about 30kya
Edit: realized I was missing a word
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