Tap water is actually a re-invention.
You're supposed to just be able to drink out of the river, but due to our own pollution and the lack of build up to diseases in the water we can't drink it directly anymore.
You're supposed to just be able to drink out of the river, but due to our own pollution and the lack of build up to diseases in the water we can't drink it directly anymore.
Also, immunocompromised people deserve life too. Physically weak humans wouldn't survive in the natural-selection world that preceded civilization—the purpose of human civilization is escaping, nullifying, the brutal morality of the natural world and substituting our own.
Clean water is a gift of life.
The main reason we need to purify it is because of the stuff humans put in it.
Animals in nature are incredibly healthy. You won't see any with even a deep cut.
An alternative explanation is that nature is some peaceful place where no animal ever gets hurt, for any reason... What would be a purely comedic exercise if people weren't believing this one all over the thread.
They've never died of any infectious disease, nor needed treatment.
The danger isn't rainwater. It is stagnant water and running water that has been contaminated. Both are more of a problem in rural and wilderness where there are animals that have been contaminated.
Absolutely huge portions of the human population died to water quality issues before the 20th century.
Personally I have no idea what water is safer unless it smells, but maybe that’s my genes.
I seriously have to ask if you're an LLM trained to spout BS?
I would like you to drop the source of your 'wild vs zoo' statistics? If need be, expand that into wild vs general captivity. Here, let me do it for you...
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36361
>We found that mammals from zoo populations generally lived longer than their wild counterparts (84% of species). The effect was most notable in species with a faster pace of life (i.e. a short life span, high reproductive rate and high mortality in the wild) because zoos evidently offer protection against a number of relevant conditions like predation, intraspecific competition and diseases.
I generally don't go out of my way to call out peoples BS, except in this case you're spouting things that are potentially dangerous to others. Don't go drinking out of puddles your dog does. I've seen dogs eat out of hot trash cans and be fine. Also I've seen dogs eat small chocolate bars and die. Trying to guess the quality of your water on the longevity of your dog is a great way to end up with brain cysts.
I'm not sure this is exactly correct. Modern people still need to boil water to safely drink it even if the water comes from a remote area which does not have any pollution or disease.
You are right that it is a reinvention though because we used to do this regularly because we had antibodies and other things which could handle whatever was in the water in small quantities. Everything we have now is so pure that our immune and digestive systems can't handle anything that isn't pure anymore.
Ancient people were just ok with some risk of dying.
We can probably cope better with a bit of contamination than almost everybody through history. But we accept even less risk.
Not everywhere. Drinking water in the little town I live in in Norway is merely filtered and a little aluminium sulphate added to precipitate out the solids. You absolutely could have drunk the water before that treatment with no ill effects. That's because it comes from a lake high in the hills above any industrial or agricultural activity.
Half correct, but not completely correct..
I'm also assuming it remains very cold or even frozen for a huge portion of the year. The water is never getting to a temperature that allows much of the dangerous things to humans to grow. For example here in Texas you're apt to get amoebas in the 25-35C waters.
Also that high in the mountains you're probably getting water off mineral rock that's had very few interactions with the biosphere to accumulate wastes from animals.
You don't need industrial or agricultural activity to kill you.
Cities with human feces, and factories still dumping waste mostly destroyed water ways.
It's state of water in most modern countries is disgusting.
Humans didn't have time to boil water before electricity & modern kitchen.
Again, you seemingly have very little knowledge of history at all. Outbreaks of waterborne diseases could happen at any time from a single bad water source. Just look up historical rates of dysentery. Humans in the past fermented and drank far more beer like substances for this reason.
Humans in the past also just fucking died... Anti-biotics and the chlorination of water explains the take-off rate of human population starting around 1900. Before then human populations were self limiting (and this goes for most animal populations too), when you get too many people or animals in one place, they pollute their own water. There was no 're-invention' here. Your entire premise sucks and does not reflect reality.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/28/a...
So that's what I mean with a re-invention, tap-water is mostly needed due to human caused pollution.
Now were there pathogen in the rivers, for sure, did they get sick sometimes, most likely. Did it cause higher child mortality, I haven't been able to find data for or against that. But overall they were fine & it's up for debate whether those being exposed to small amounts of pathogens were a win or lose in the long run (some theories suggest our lack of pathogens are connected to auto-immune diseases & allergies)
Also our cities of course bring a lot of sewage issues causing another issue with water streams.