Welcome to History is not boring by Kidopoly.com. I'm Mira. And I'm Finn. Before we start our incredible adventure today, we have a huge shout out to five-year-old Austin! Austin sent us a message with a burning question.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Austin wanted to know, where did Earth's very first drop of water actually come from?
SPEAKER_00It is such a brilliant question, Austin, that we decided to make a whole episode answering it. And to figure it out, we have to travel back a long, long time.
SPEAKER_01How long? Like back to the dinosaurs?
SPEAKER_00Way before the dinosaurs. Close your eyes and imagine Earth 4.5 billion years ago. It wasn't the beautiful blue and green planet we know today.
SPEAKER_01Wait, it's glowing bright red. It looks like it is completely covered in boiling, bubbling lava. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00The young Earth was a giant 2,000-degree hot rocky ball soaring through space. There were absolutely zero oceans, no rivers, and not a single drop of water on the surface.
SPEAKER_01So if it was just a giant space oven, how did we end up with oceans? I read there are 326 million cubic miles of water on Earth right now.
SPEAKER_00You're totally right, Finn. That amount of water is enough to fill about 540 trillion Olympic swimming pools. Today, we are going to track down exactly how those swimming pools got filled.
SPEAKER_01And how ancient humans survived before they could just turn on a kitchen sink.
SPEAKER_00So, imagine that boiling lava version of Earth. To get oceans, two completely wild things had to happen. First, the rocks deep inside the Earth actually held trapped water.
SPEAKER_01Rocks can hold water like a sponge.
SPEAKER_00Sort of. The chemical pieces of water were locked inside the rocks. As the planet started to cool down, giant supervolcanoes erupted everywhere, burping out massive clouds of steam. Ew, the Earth was doing giant lava burps. Huge ones! This steam built up a super thick atmosphere around the planet. But that steam alone wasn't enough to make our huge oceans. Scientists believe a massive amount of our water was delivered by space delivery trucks.
SPEAKER_01Space delivery trucks? You mean aliens with giant water hoses?
SPEAKER_00No, asteroids and comets! Specifically, a type of space rock called carbonaceous chondrites. They are rocky meteorites with water locked inside their minerals that crashed into early Earth, dropping off millions of tons of water.
SPEAKER_01Whoa! So for millions of years we were just getting bombarded by giant space water balloons.
SPEAKER_00Exactly! These icy rocks slammed into Earth over and over. Eventually, the planet cooled down enough that all that trapped steam and melted space ice turned into clouds, and it started to rain. Did it rain for like a whole week? Try millions of years. The sky just opened up and poured non-stop. We know this because scientists found a tiny blue crystal in Australia called a zircon. It's from a place called the Jack Hills, and it is 4.4 billion years old.
SPEAKER_01A tiny crystal? How does that prove anything about heavy rain?
SPEAKER_00Because of the chemical clues trapped right inside it. That microscopic crystal, which is the size of a single grain of sand, proves that liquid oceans existed almost right after the Earth formed. So Earth got its massive oceans. Now let's fast forward billions of years to early humans. Our bodies are mostly made of water, and we need to drink about 2-3 litres every single day just to survive.
SPEAKER_01Which is super easy now. You just grab a cup and turn on the tap. But ancient people didn't have sinks or refrigerators.
SPEAKER_00Right. Before people settled down in one place, they were hunters and gatherers. They had to follow the water and, more importantly, carry it with them. In South Africa, at a place called Deep Cluve Rock Shelter, archaeologists found out how humans carried water 60,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_01Did they invent ancient plastic bottles? Or use big leaves?
SPEAKER_00Nope. They used empty ostrich eggs. They would clean out the giant egg, which holds about as much liquid as a large soda bottle, and scratch cool geometric designs on the shell to mark whose it was.
SPEAKER_01Wait, they drank out of old eggshells? I mean that's smart, but kind of weird. Didn't it spill everywhere?
SPEAKER_00They would plug the hole with a piece of clay or tightly packed grass. They even buried the eggs in the wet sand to keep the water cool during hot days. But as humans started farming, we couldn't just chase water anymore. We had to dig for it. Oh, you mean they built wells? Who dug the very first one? One of the absolute oldest known wooden wells was found in a town called Ostrov in the Czech Republic. It was built in exactly the year 5256 BCE.
SPEAKER_01Wait, how do they know the exact year? That was over 7,000 years ago. Did they find a calendar at the bottom of the well?
SPEAKER_00They used tree rings. The ancient well was lined with massive pieces of oak wood. By counting the rings in the preserved wood, scientists could tell the precise year the tree was chopped down by early farmers. It was perfectly carved with ancient stone tools. So wooden wells were great for small farming villages. But what happens when you have a massive, bustling city with hundreds of thousands of thirsty people?
SPEAKER_01You definitely cannot have a hundred thousand people sharing one tiny well. The line would take ten years. Everyone would dry up.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So, ancient kings started moving entire rivers. In the year 690 BCE, the mighty Assyrian king Sennacherib needed more water for his capital city, Nineveh. So what did he do? Tell everyone to drink less? He built the Jurwan aqueduct. An aqueduct is basically a giant, man-made water bridge. He ordered his workers to use over two million massive stone blocks to build a huge channel that carried water from the mountains over 30 miles away.
SPEAKER_01Just for water.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and the ancient Romans took it even further. Starting in 312 BCE with a project called the Aqua Appia, they eventually built over 500 kilometres of aqueducts feeding just the city of Rome. It brought in millions of gallons a day.
SPEAKER_01But wait, river water can be super dirty. If it's travelling over 30 miles outside, did they just drink mud, leaves, and fish poop?
SPEAKER_00Sometimes the water was pretty murky, but they learned how to clean it. Around 1500 BCE, ancient Egyptians discovered a mineral chemical called alum. When they dropped it in cloudy water, all the dirt clumped together and sank to the bottom, like a snow globe settling. Wow!
SPEAKER_01Ancient science to the rescue!
SPEAKER_00Yep, and around 400 BCE, a famous Greek doctor named Hippocrates invented something called the Hippocratic Sleeve. It was a special cloth bag. You boiled the water over a fire first to remove bad smells, then poured it through the cloth to trap all the dirt and sand. Learning to find, carry, and clean water changed human history forever. Because of amazing aqueducts and deep wells, cities could grow anywhere, not just right on the muddy banks of a river. Rome grew to have over a million people.
SPEAKER_01It really makes you look at a simple glass of tap water totally differently. It's not just water, it is billions of years of history and thousands of years of inventions.
SPEAKER_00Speaking of billions of years of history, are you ready for a really weird fun fact about the exact water you drink today? I don't know. Is it gonna gross me out? Probably a little. Remember how Earth has had the exact same amount of water for billions of years? It never leaves. It just loops endlessly through the water cycle. It rains, animals drink it, they pee it out, it evaporates, and then it rains all over again.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00Are you telling me? Yep. Every single glass of water you drink contains molecules that were once swallowed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. You are basically drinking recycled dinosaur pee.
SPEAKER_01Ew! I totally knew it. I am never drinking water again. I'll only drink apple juice from now on.
SPEAKER_00Apple juice is mostly water too, Finn. You can't escape the dino water. But here is another wild fact. Of all the water on Earth, 97% is salty ocean water. And 2% is locked up, frozen in glaciers.
SPEAKER_01Wait, 97 plus 2 is 99. That leaves just 1% of all Earth's water for us to actually drink.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. 3% is fresh water, but just 1% is available liquid. So we better take really good care of it. Even if a T-Rex drank it first. Alright, Finn, it's quiz time! Let's see how much you remember from our incredible water journey.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'm ready. Bring on the dinosaur juice questions.
SPEAKER_00First question. What is the name of the tiny 4.4 billion year old crystal that proves Earth had early oceans? Next one. What kind of giant bird eggs did early humans in South Africa use to carry water 60,000 years ago? Question 3. What clever trick did scientists use to find out the exact year the wooden well in Ostrov was built? Here's number four. What was the name of the famous Greek doctor who invented a cloth bag to filter dirt out of drinking water? Last question. Great job! Let's see how you did. The first answer is a zircon crystal. For question two, they used empty ostrich eggs. Number three, the answer is they counted the tree rings in the ancient oak wood. Question four, it was Hippocrates who invented the Hippocratic sleeve. And the final answer is just 1%.
SPEAKER_01I got most of those. This episode was absolutely crazy. I still can't believe our oceans came from exploding volcanoes and giant space rocks.
SPEAKER_00It's totally true! And a huge thank you again to Austin for asking such a brilliant question that inspired today's amazing adventure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Austin Rocks! Hey, if you love learning cool stuff like where water comes from, you should totally leave us a five-star review.
SPEAKER_00Yes! If you want to help us out, just scroll down on your podcast app and tap those five stars. Think of it as leaving a five-star review for the universe's best icy space delivery trucks.
SPEAKER_01Haha, exactly. And oh, don't forget to check out our site kidopoly.com. We've got tons of fun learning games and cool activities waiting for you. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Head over to kidopoly.com to keep exploring. Also, if you want a shout out on the show like Austin got, or just want to say hi, send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com.
SPEAKER_01We would love to hear from you. See you next time on History's Not Boring.
SPEAKER_00Bye everyone!