Going High: The early
pioneers
From the beginning of time, humans always had a crazy want
to go in high altitude. Sadly for most of the first pioneers hiking in high
altitude was a deathly choice and many of them died of mountain sickness. Even
dough every civilization had really interesting interpretation and/or
observations about this deathly sickness.
The first signs of
pioneers in early civilizations were Icemans skeletons in the Alps at 10 000
feet between Italy and Austria. It looks as though they died in a storm 5000
years ago. A funny belief that Xuan Zang in the 7th
century, thought that if you were
dressed in red or carried gourds will hiking in the mountain, you would get
attacked by a fierce dragon. In 1590, a Spanish Jesuit, Jose Acosta, wrote
down his observation on mountain sickness, while crossing the Andes.
Surprisingly in 1850 people thought that
high altitude ( in balloons) was actually healthy and quickened the brain, so
it was very good some for invalids. But of all of those, the best and truest
observation was made in 1862, by a balloonist called Sir James Asher, whom
flew “About as high as the summit of Everest” “And ascended until he became unconscious”
As you can see there has always been victims and theories on
Mountain Sickness. And even though now we have quite a good idea on how deathly
it can be, some humans still have the desire to achieve the impossible and
climb the Everest, the highest pick in the world
