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 7^th 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