Quote Originally Posted by gjl View Post
How did humankind survive for thousands of years before bottled water?
A lot of them didn't survive. In the Middle Ages water quality was so bad that most people in Europe were only able to consume beer-style drinks or wine. The idea of fresh municipal drinking water was mostly perfected in Philadelphia in 1815 and engineers from around the world flocked there to see how they did it.

What People drank in The Middle Ages and Renaissance

Fairmount Water Works - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia