> Bacteria wasn’t known about thousand of years ago. Nor were nutrients (in the sense that we know it now).
And yet, processed like nixtamalization (the processed used to make the nutrients in maize available to humans) were discovered over 3000 years ago.
If ancient humans figured that complex process out, they certainly would have been able to figure out that boiling water made it safer to drink, even if they didn't know why. They'd probably just claim it killed the evil spirits or pleased the water god and have been happy with that explanation.
If someone is going to go through the process of boiling water, they might as well throw some stuff in there and turn it into soup/tea/broth/stew/whatever so that it tastes nice and makes you less hungry.
To accurately gauge if something is safe, you need a quick and direct result that is consistent. Unsafe food and liquid isn’t that. Often it’s more a percentage problem. So to solve the percentage problem you then need a larger sample size. And people simply weren’t organised enough to accurately measure at that scale in the periods you’re suggesting.
As an aside, this is why people got thrown into volcanos and such like. If you don’t have measurements that are easy to correlate then you’re effectively left to guesswork.
And yet, processed like nixtamalization (the processed used to make the nutrients in maize available to humans) were discovered over 3000 years ago.
If ancient humans figured that complex process out, they certainly would have been able to figure out that boiling water made it safer to drink, even if they didn't know why. They'd probably just claim it killed the evil spirits or pleased the water god and have been happy with that explanation.
If someone is going to go through the process of boiling water, they might as well throw some stuff in there and turn it into soup/tea/broth/stew/whatever so that it tastes nice and makes you less hungry.