Comment by throwaway787544 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway787544 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway787544

> who often opted for watered-down wine to sterilize pathogens in the water

Will this meme ever die? The Greeks didn't know what a pathogen was, much less sterilization. They had clean water. The ancient wells of spring water are still there in Greek cities, still producing. The only time people wrote about using alcohol to make water "safe" was when the army was out in the wilderness and the only water nearby was brackish and stagnant.

> and to stay sober enough for symposiums of (allegedly) high-brow thought and debate.

Symposiums were just a bro party. They could be serious or salacious, and they could get rowdy; it depended on the host (kinda like today). They drank diluted wine because drinking undiluted wine would turn you mad and only uncivilized cretins drank it undiluted.

Just because water is safe at the source doesn't mean it stays that way if kept for long. Many, many cultures, notably China, avoid drinking fresh water because they've learned the hard way that it's not safe enough, although the Chinese solution was to boil it and turn it into tea.

Also, wine is shelf-stable and can be stored for long periods, while fruit juice cannot be. Modern fruit syrups and the like rely on large quantities of added sugar, which was not generally available back then.

The comment you are replying to talked about the myth that people mixed water and wine to sterilize the water. Wine does not have high enough alcohol content to sterilize water.

From what I understand tea (brewing a leaf in heated water) is a relatively new phenomenon, on the order of a millennia or so.

Also I doubt that 10-15% alcohol in water is actually capable of thoroughly sterilizing anything...

The brew process itself involves heating/cooking.

The end result was alcohol below 10%

You probably can't use it to sterilize a wound, but the alcohol content should be enough to stop bacteria from growing in the beverage itself.

Not if you mix it with water.

It doesn't really have to be sterilized to be safer than stagnant water. Most of the things that make you sick aren't that hardy, I'm pretty sure.

That's a good point, I didn't think to consider the alternative of drinking stagnant water

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