• xylogx@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Humans sweat. It is one of our superpowers and enables endurance hunting. Anthropologists theorize that early humans would have had to have developed water carrying technologies for this to be viable. They study primitive hunter gathers who still practice endurance hunting and they use water skins during the hunt.

  • SirDankbud@lemmy.ca
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    14 days ago

    You know the smell dirt makes when its wet? It’s called petrichor and humans can smell it better than sharks smell blood in the water. It is detectable by the human nose at 0.4 parts per BILLION. This gave early humans a huge advantage in finding water when needed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor

    • Smeagol666@lemm.ee
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      14 days ago

      I was trying to think of that word just a few days ago when I went outside and could smell that a storm was coming, then my ADHD kicked in an I forgot about it.

    • Diddlydee@feddit.uk
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      14 days ago

      There is an Indian perfume base called Mitti Attar which tries to replicate this smell. It’s like damp moss at first scent, then develops into rain on hot sand. It is entrancing. Proper Mitti Attar sells for thousands and takes years to make.

  • Poojabber@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    We had water bottles way before plastic… we used wood, mud, clay, stone, and animal parts to store water before recorded history…

  • Nefara@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Yes, humans used to live much closer to water sources. On a town level, if you didn’t have a creek or river or water somewhere nearby you just didn’t settle there. Available water was absolutely necessary for agriculture, domestic animals, cooking, washing, and of course drinking. On a personal level, you would go in the morning to a central well or water source and gather your water you would need for the day. Depending on the household needs it might be multiple trips with heavy, full vessels. You would put the water in to household water vessels, like a basin for cleaning or a ewer for washing or your cook pot. If you were thirsty at home, you would take a dipper (basically a ladle) and take some water from the household supply.

    Where did you get the impression we didn’t used to have water bottles? They weren’t made of plastic or metal but humans have carried water with them for probably as long as we’ve used tools. You can carry water in drinking horns, in clay pots, wooden buckets, in dried out animal bladders or leather skeins, and there’s literally a type of gourd called a “bottle gourd” which has been dried out and used as a personal water bottle for milennia across any region that can grow them. Don’t underestimate human ingenuity, we didn’t always have access to the same technology and materials but we have always been able to problem solve.

  • hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    13 days ago

    Pretty much yes. If you look at a map, you’ll notice that most cities, especially old (like old old) ones are next to or near water sources. There are, of course, other reasons for this as well: building a settlement by water will also give you the opportunity to use boats, for transportation and shipping. Merchant cities tend to be by seas and oceans, because transporting cargo by ships is much more efficient than by land, especially before airplanes. Then there’s fishing, crop irrigation, and just that humans like bodies of water.

    But also, what do you exactly mean by water bottle? Because water transportation and storage vessels have been around for quite a while, and aqueducts have been built by various civilisations across history.

  • remon@ani.social
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    14 days ago

    Animal bladders and other organs were used as portable water containers.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    14 days ago

    Going backwards in time, they had metal and brass containers, before that they had wooden buckets and barrels, ceramic pots, carved out animal parts or fruit of plants.

    Before farming, probably a good portion of the water early people subsisted on was from the food they ate. (Berries and fruit, fish, meat, etc.) Water might pool around rocky areas after rain, even if there was no stream nearby in a pinch.

  • defunct_punk@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    For the most part, yes, at least on a large scale. Proximity to a water source was pretty much a requirement for developments for most of history.

    On the smaller side of things, other commenters have already mentioned that we had ways to store water before bottles existed.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    The answer should be fairly obvious to anyone who’s looked at an European map, there’s a reason why the oldest cities are always around or near rivers. Also humans had bottle-like technologies since essentially forever, it’s probably one of the first tools to be developed after “pointy stick”.

    • Zenith@lemm.ee
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      13 days ago

      The “bell beaker” people and culture is a fun rabbit hole for anyone interested in ancient water carrying technologies

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    14 days ago

    You ever notice how every other animal manages to survive without water bottles? It was like that for most of human existence, before we figured out water skins and wooden cups and clay jugs.

    • Iunnrais@lemm.ee
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      13 days ago

      I suspect they’d include “cups, glasses, canteens, water skins, etc” in the category of “water bottles”. :p

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
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    14 days ago

    Yes. Throughout history, people have almost always built their settlements close to major bodies of (fresh) water. For example, you’d be hard-pressed to find a major city anywhere in the world that doesn’t have at least a stream near where it was founded, if not a full-blown river that still runs through the middle of it.