The History of Travel

Humans were born to travel.
We have been doing it for millions of years. I mean, just look at all of those ‘historical shows’. Fred Flintstone was driving around in a car long before the design was a twinkle in the eyes of Mr Ford. Granted, he needed to use his feet, but hey, it still managed to travel faster than a Mondeo right? On this page I want to give you a brief overview of the history of travel. You may be surprised at what you will learn in such few words.

Right, let’s head back to the ‘Flintstone’ era.
Now, obviously they were not driving around at this time, or riding upon dinosaurs for that matter. They did travel though. They had to. There were no supermarkets. If you wanted to get some food then you were going to need to out there and get it yourself. This means hunting. Travel is the reason why humans spread around the world. It is said that the current incarnation of humans began millions of years ago in Africa. In search of food and drink people started to travel. There were no planes back then. Everything had to be done on foot and that meant traversing the globe. Obviously some people did not make it and it took generations to travel. But hey, next time an old person says that they had to walk to school in their bare feet you should try and remind them of the Flintstones who had to walk to a whole other country in their bare feet (and often naked as well).

Shooting ahead a few million years and travel started to change.
Travel was now about ‘invading’ other countries (often on boats). The Vikings were the main culprits here taking many countries that they stumbled across. Of course, there were some people out there just looking to explore. Most were looking to overtake countries though. Think of this as an early form of ‘sightseeing’ where your souvenir was a whole country. The British practiced this form of ‘sightseeing’ a few hundred years later when it came to forming the British Empire. Only now have they started to return the souvenirs (although still keeping a few of the special ones)

Anyway, the world has been overtaken, mostly by boats and the Vikings.
At this point people are starting to travel between countries without blood on their mind. Instead they are doing it for educational and ‘vacationing’ purposes. Again, this travel is mainly by boat. Some people are walking or hopping on horse and carriage. It is mainly by boat though due to all the seas and the like (particularly around Europe). Immigration laws did not exist back then so it was pretty easy to travel. Boats made the world smaller, although it still took many weeks, and sometimes months, to travel from country to country. There was a lot of exploration going on around this time with a few new countries being discovered (perhaps the big one here is America, and of course, Australia which at this point was like one big ‘prison camp’ for the British). The majority of the discoveries around this time were as a result of people being lost to be honest. Think of it is the original incarnation of the way students travel nowadays. They set out with a plan, the world at their feet. The plan goes out of the window and they discover places they never heard about. It is quite awesome.

So, all of this travel and exploration bought the world together.
America is of course a big country and walking and horses was not quite cutting the walking around it. Enter the train. This fantastic beast of a machine could get people from point to point quite fast (well, at this time faster than walking). It was fantastic and people started to lay tracks everywhere. Many of these tracks remain in place (well, not the same tracks, but the layouts are roughly the same). The strange thing is, the American way of transport via Train has never been as sophisticated as European Train Lines. This form of transport really exploded there. In any case, Train travel made the world slightly smaller once more (although of course there would be no real ‘international across water train service’ until the formation of the Channel Tunnel in the 1990’s (connects France and England).

Zooming ahead a little and we have cars.
These were not that popular during the early stages (far too slow), but most people own them nowadays. This gave people the freedom to travel wherever they wanted whenever they wanted. People had never experienced freedom like this. The family ‘road trip’ was born and ‘tourist attractions’ started to pop up almost everywhere. It was quite crazy.

On the Wright path.
The latest advancement in the world of travel came when the aircraft was invented by the Wright Brothers. The first design only flew for a few seconds but it proved that air travel might just be possible. It did not take many decades to perfect the idea. Once it was perfected it meant that you could travel anywhere in the world within a few hours. The technology has been getting more sophisticated and faster ever since. Any one of us can head online, purchase a flight ticket and head to wherever we want in the world. The world is so small nowadays and there are so many travel options available that it is a surprise anybody walks any more. You can get anywhere with transport and it is surprisingly cheap too.

Less Moola, more photo ops.
Travel nowadays is cheaper than ever. People are flying all over the globe. The world is absolutely tiny. I am willing to bet that there are actually very few people in the Western World who have yet to travel abroad. Cultures are starting to come together and we are able to see things that we would have never have seen before. Travel is completely for enjoyment. Gone are the days where humans would have to travel to another country to hunt for food. Nowadays we are travelling just for ‘something to do’. I bet for just a few dollars you could travel great distances right now.

Back to the future.
Of course, you can’t write about ‘The History of Travel’ without thinking about the future. So, where are we going to head? Well, obviously into space. There are quite a few decent planets out there for taking. If we go the route of ‘Futurama’ then you can expect some rather nifty Disneyesque Theme Parks to pop up on the moon (which should be a real treat). You may even find yourself enjoying your spring break with an Alien or too. You will be surprised to know just how close we are to space travel of this nature too. There is talk of establishing a ‘Mars Base’, and of course Virgin have just launched Virgin Galactic which is going to great a new generation of ‘Space Tourists’. 

One thing is for sure though, when we do manage to take to the skies, there will still be people sunning themselves and partying in ‘hot’ destinations such as Spain and Miami.