Water is a ubiquitous good in the modern world. We always have access to it, regardless of where we are. More often than not, we can move a couple of feet, make a slight hand motion, and have permanent access to clean, potable tap water.
It wasn’t always like this, however. For most of human existence, our relationship with water has been a double-edged blade. We need water to survive, and so the struggle of acquiring a clean source of water has been the source of conflict for most of our history.
The importance of water for humanity is easily observed. The earliest human civilizations almost exclusively sprang up around sources of water such as rivers. In this article, I’m going to detail the very basics of why safe water was so integral to early human development.
Water, a Basic Necessity
Early human societies were represented by an ever-growing need of acquiring food and water for everyone. For a long period of time, this was the most important struggle of an everyday human: trying to avoid starvation while having to stave off predators and weather conditions at the same time.
When the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a more agrarian one was made, the seeds of early civilizations were first sown. Although the transition happened separately and independently in various parts of the world, our collective course of evolution eventually lead to the understanding and widespread adoption of agriculture
Now, human cultures could stop spending all their time trying to gather food. While a hunter-gatherer society almost always struggles for resources, a society that has developed agriculture, in comparison, has an excess of food, opening windows to the appearance of more complex concepts such as caste systems.
Why Water Is Integral to Crops
It is a known fact that the first civilizations appeared on the banks of rivers. Two very popular examples, depending on where you’re from, could either be the Egyptians or the precursors of the Chinese around the Yangtze River, both of which started taking root around 12,000 BC.
Rivers were so advantageous compared to any other part of the environment because they provided a constant source of drinking water. While it is now known that river water isn’t the cleanest, back then it was much preferred over alternatives such as saltwater.
Furthermore, one of the biggest benefits of settling near a source of fresh water is the fact that farmland irrigation is significantly easier. It wasn’t until much later in human history that we learned how to efficiently farm in areas where the fertility of the land was reduced or too arid.
Therefore, these early civilizations were able to overcome a huge challenge and obstacle for humans: the constant need for food and water. With these two resources secured and multiplying off of each other, human civilization started in earnest.
Ancient Water Filtration
While ancient people weren’t unintelligent by any means, their knowledge of the world was less developed than ours. They knew, for example, that you can improve the taste, look, and smell of water by boiling it, but they weren’t aware of the fact that it also purifies it by killing any germs or bacteria.
This did not stop them from experimenting with water filtration. Technically, almost every Egyptian well was a filtration system in its own way, since wells are able to filter some contaminants due to being lined with sand and gravel, which are used in water purification even to this day.
The earliest documentation we have of water treatment dates back to about 1500 BC. Some tombs holding important Egyptian figures depict devices used for water purification, and we know they were able to remove suspended solids through the use of metals such as aluminum and iron sulfate.
Keep Your Supply Clean
It can be easy to take our tap water for granted since it seems to be in infinite supply. Getting it to this point, however, wasn’t easy. It required the sacrifices of millions of people over the course of our history.
However, while we might have access to drinking water across the globe, there is still one aspect we occasionally struggle with: water purification.
Therefore, if your home water supply is becoming a bit “off” or if you’d like to ensure that never happens, then consider looking at Water eStore water filters. Better safe than sorry!
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