Mold and other damage again is symptomatic of modern building techniques. Humans for centuries had figured out how to live without AC sustainably on most regions for earth.
As the other poster said - ability to do it doesn't mean it works really well.
From my 96 year old grandfather: We planned to replace every piece of plaster in the wall in 10 years, and we kept hardwood floors because we could throw the rugs away and sand the floors down when the mold started to get bad.
Yes, but often they did that by simply living with some mold and rebuilding every few years. Just because they could live with it didn’t make it ideal.
That's not entirely true. In Bulgaria, even during the hottest summer days, you go into a traditional stonewall building and it is cool inside with no mold as walls are whitewashed. In some newer traditional houses, the first floor is dug half in the ground, which also keeps the first floor cooler in the summer and warmer during the winter, and it's where the living room typically is.
