THE HUMAN OBSESSION WITH CLIMBING

I think climbing is a vital skill and a mandatory ability. When I’m in a particularly cruel mood I often sit and watch passers-by and wonder if, during some unfortunate rambling accident they had taken a fall and been left hanging of the edge of a cliff, could haul their carcasses over to safety again. Sadly I usually find my saying “dead” to myself more often than not.

Today when we think of climbing we think of the modern sport of rock climbing and its many variants. However, climbing is a multifaceted skill and there are many different types of movements involved.

For most of us our first exposure to climbing is climbing over a wall or up a tree.

Human beings have come a long way since our ape ancestors first left the trees for a future of bipedal-ism.

If you watch the way our closest relatives the chimpanzees climb you might think that all traces of our climbing ancestry have disappeared but that isn’t the case. The curling reflex of the foot in response to the sole being tickled is an evolutionary throwback to a new-born apes ability to instantly grab a branch and cling for dear life.

While we don’t have the same limb proportions or strength of our chimp cousins (a chimpanzee is 1.5x stronger) we are still great climbers. In fact, if we take a highly specialized human climber and compare it to a chimpanzee, in some instances I don’t think they would even be close.

I don’t think a chimp could scale a sheer rock face but having said that I think they would have the good sense not to. It’s unlikely however that we humans could swing through the trees as efficiently as apes. This is due to limb length and gripping ability.

On a side note, it’s also worth noting that humans with long arm spans and short lower limb length make for very economical climbers.

The fascination with climbing

Climbing is ingrained in our nature. We can thank our ancestors for coming down from the trees and embarking on their bipedal adventures for the relatively sophisticated species we are today. But the trees were always a safe harbor for us and allowed us to escape predators and provided us with food if you could climb and get it.

It wasn’t just trees. Mountains? We climbed them. Today we know that if there is something to climb, humans will climb it and the more dangerous the better.

You only need to watch a toddler in a play room full of large padded blocks to realize that they will climb them without any prompting.

Climbing provides us with additional height. Height gives us a better perspective with which to view our surroundings and make better decisions. So despite the potential dangers of climbing, we still thought it was worth the risk.