> they will also know by tradition the springs, streams and wells that yield clean water
I once drank water from a mountain stream and spent a week sick from some sort of phage associated with beavers.
As any avid hiker can tell you, even crystal clear, pristine surface waters still run the risk of making you sick. Even without the need of human intervention.
Almost every human culture has some traditional drink that involves something boiled. It's weird to assume Europeans were magically different.
Giardiasis is often referred to as the "beaver fever" because the organism completes part of its lifecycle in mammals and beavers crap wherever they eat, which is in the water.
I once drank water from a mountain stream and spent a week sick from some sort of phage associated with beavers.
As any avid hiker can tell you, even crystal clear, pristine surface waters still run the risk of making you sick. Even without the need of human intervention.
Almost every human culture has some traditional drink that involves something boiled. It's weird to assume Europeans were magically different.