alt Hacker News> Just like now, you boil water if you are aware of risk.
People didn't do that, though. As far as I can tell, water-drinking was not particularly common. People went to surprising lengths to produce other forms of drinks, all of them fermented in some way.
> All of your uncertainty applies just as much to today as it did in the past.
What on earth do you mean by that? Today you have clean water from taps all over your house. In the old days, clean water was rare, and you had to carry it home. If you were lucky you could use a wagon, but it was still hard work.
I mean, yes, of course there was risk then and risk now, but the risk was orders of magnitude higher in the past.
> Btw, you casually ACCEPTED that people drank beer instead of water when we know this is false.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I've worked on this for a decade, collecting archive accounts from around Europe. I can quote you pages and pages and pages and pages of people writing about how they used to drink beer against thirst every day. Read [my book](https://www.brewerspublications.com/products/historical-brew...) for more.
> Even on ships (as you would know if you clicked through the askhistorians link under the top of the thread) ships did carry (a lot of!) water
Buy a subscription to Craft Beer & Brewing and read my article on [skibsøl](https://beerandbrewing.com/skibsol-smoky-ale-of-the-seas/) the Danish style of beer created expressly for the purpose of being drunk by sailors. It starts with the story of the gov't commission created to investigate improving the sailors' beer after the Battle of Køge Bay.
> You'd really have to find evidence that people explicitly avoided water to make such a claim.
I don't claim that people explicitly avoided water, because the evidence is thin and ambiguous. (Seriously, read the comment you replied to!) What I do claim is that people did drink lots of beer for thirst in various contexts (listing exactly which would make this too long). Exactly why they did is not clear, but we do know people thought beer was healthy. Probably they thought it was healthy because it has lots of calories. (This was a time when getting enough to eat was a challenge for large parts of the population.)
> being unable to boil it.
Again, people didn't do that. You don't need to go back very far in time before people didn't have easy access to metal containers to boil in. Long story, [this chapter explains](https://press.nordicopenaccess.no/cdf/catalog/view/238/1292/...).
> As far as I can tell, water-drinking was not particularly common
Based on what? You certainly haven't given any indication of having read what historians have to say.
Granted, that subreddit could be a cabal of people colluding to make us think humans didn't go through a phase of drinking beer rather than water. It seems easier to believe you're trying to justify your own talking out of your ass if you can't respond to specific claims.
> In the old days, clean water was rare
What does this mean? Clean water was arguably much more common than it is today because of industrial contamination.
> What I do claim is that people did drink lots of beer for thirst in various contexts (listing exactly which would make this too long).
Nobody contests this. What is contested is fear of drinking water.
> I've worked on this for a decade, collecting archive accounts from around Europe. I can quote you pages and pages and pages and pages of people writing about how they used to drink beer against thirst every day.
Great! Pay up! I ain't reading your book.
Btw, you don't need metal to boil water. And beer is healthy if you're faced with a calorie deficit; it's loaded with nutrients. Perhaps you should use this as an argument for why people drank beer (allegedly and confusingly instead of water)
> I don't claim that people explicitly avoided water
Yes you did:
> And was this why people drank beer instead?
If you did not mean to imply that beer drinking came at the deficit of water drinking, you should consider rephrasing.
> What I do claim is that people did drink lots of beer for thirst in various contexts (listing exactly which would make this too long).
I have no doubt that someone in history said this, just as they did now; what I find hard to believe is that this was in any way normal or typical. One citation might be more meaningful than this entire thread. If you can provide a source, please do so.
Hell, I drink beer for thirst myself; against all rational judgement. This doesn't imply my tap water is unclean.