>>12602389this also helped lead to the invention of canning-we realized we could store food for years at ambient temperature if it was heated enough to kill bacteria and their spores and kept sealed off from the air. It's crazy to think that we had to rely on things like smoking or salting to preserve food for so long.
also wild that we only accidentally half-stumbled into water sterilization via boiling due to stuff like tea-the chinese noticed that people who drank lots of tea got sick much less and attributed it to some curative property of the plant, but it was mostly just that tea drinkers rarely drank unboiled water and thus were not exposed to bacteria. sad that in much of the world the absence of a drink made with boiled water killed millions over the years.
