What temperature are most springs that are used for drinking water?

[Anopsology]

Not the exact temperature but.. I've been wondering

There has been some debate on the internet about room temperature or cold water being better for you body (im sure its all pseudo science nonsense)

But it did get me thinking. The springs humans have been drinking out of for throughout history on this planet..  Are most of them pretty cold? Do we have an evolutionary preference for cold water?

 

 I have never really been to a spring to gather my own water.   Are they usually pretty cold?   

[John Cuthber]

In our evolutionary past we would have been better off finding cold water- it's less likely to be stagnant and less likely to have had a chance for pathogenic bacteria to grow in it.

[Ken Fabian]

@ John Cuthber - that was the potential difference of significance that occurred to me too. I suspect a lot of the time there was not a choice, but where there was a choice it may have included a preference for cool water over warm, but to what extent our hunter gatherer ancestors suspected a connection between warm water and illness is hard to say. But if it's cloudy or discoloured, that is easy to see and could lead to clear water being preferred despite temperature. I expect aroma and taste might still take precedence over other considerations - but it may be that cool water will have less aroma and is likely to taste better.

[John Cuthber]

8 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

but to what extent our hunter gatherer ancestors suspected a connection between warm water and illness is hard to say.

Probably none. I suspect that other animals have the same preference (given a choice).

In which case early man's instinctive preference for cool water would have kept them safer.

[pavelcherepan]

On 6/30/2018 at 12:31 PM, Anopsology said:

Not the exact temperature but.. I've been wondering

If these springs are produced by groundwater sources then the temperature of the water in them should be roughly equal to the year-round average temperature for the particular area. This is a handy trick in climate science, where instead of constantly measuring temperature to find averages, you can just measure groundwater temperature and it will give you a very close result with only minor changes with seasons. This is due to thermal insulation provided by overlying rock formations. 

But then you can go other way around - if you know year-round average temperature for your area, you can predict what temperature ground water would be. For example, in Southern-Central Europe during the last ice-age, you'd probably be looking at somewhere between 2 and 5 degrees C year-round temperatures, so spring water Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons drank was probably quite chill.