02-24-2011, 01:49 PM
With regard to boiling water, what you have to understand is that, at the time, the primary religion would have been Zoroastrianism (or some form of it, since the concepts of Zoroastrianism is what most organised religions we know today are in fact based on, having borrowed various bits of it). In Zoroastrianism, the two most important elements are fire and water.
Zoroastrianism's prophet - Zoroast - the guy who came up with the religion in the first place and the guy whose experiences are what tales of Jesus, Mithra etc are largely based on, was in fact in a river drawing water for a primitive religious purification ceremony when he supposedly had the 'visions' which led to the formation of Zoroastrianism as a religion, and although it took a while to catch on, Zoroastrianism ended up being the state religion of many places in and around Persia.
It's not hard to see how ancient peoples might have come to the conclusion that fire and water might lead to magical (or sacred if you prefer) properties. Even at a basic level, the fact that steam comes off water when it is boiled (and looks a bit like the smoke which comes off fire) would have had even uneducated people making some kind of connection between the two and since, especially in desert cultures, we know how important both fire and water are, i.e. you need both to survive - water in the day and fire at night when it gets cold, this makes a lot of sense even without the religious mumbo-jumbo people attached to it.
Way before medicine was understood to the level it is these days, people were boiling plants to extract stuff from the leaves for medicinal purposes, and so we can logically surmise that even without fully understanding water-borne microbes and diseases, experience would have probably had people knowing that boiling water made it less unhealthy to drink simply by learning this over time. Couple this with the religious aspects of how fire and water were regarded in Zoroastrianism on a mystical level, and it's likely that you have your explanation.
Al
Zoroastrianism's prophet - Zoroast - the guy who came up with the religion in the first place and the guy whose experiences are what tales of Jesus, Mithra etc are largely based on, was in fact in a river drawing water for a primitive religious purification ceremony when he supposedly had the 'visions' which led to the formation of Zoroastrianism as a religion, and although it took a while to catch on, Zoroastrianism ended up being the state religion of many places in and around Persia.
It's not hard to see how ancient peoples might have come to the conclusion that fire and water might lead to magical (or sacred if you prefer) properties. Even at a basic level, the fact that steam comes off water when it is boiled (and looks a bit like the smoke which comes off fire) would have had even uneducated people making some kind of connection between the two and since, especially in desert cultures, we know how important both fire and water are, i.e. you need both to survive - water in the day and fire at night when it gets cold, this makes a lot of sense even without the religious mumbo-jumbo people attached to it.
Way before medicine was understood to the level it is these days, people were boiling plants to extract stuff from the leaves for medicinal purposes, and so we can logically surmise that even without fully understanding water-borne microbes and diseases, experience would have probably had people knowing that boiling water made it less unhealthy to drink simply by learning this over time. Couple this with the religious aspects of how fire and water were regarded in Zoroastrianism on a mystical level, and it's likely that you have your explanation.
Al
Alan Bradbury
