Sunday, April 12, 2015

The first tourist

In the shower this morning, it occurred to me that some one person in human history must have been the very first tourist, by which I mean the first person to travel recreationally.

For all of human history, people have travelled to find food or to flee problems where they were living before or to trade or to warmonger or to find new unused or conquerable land or for a quest or for a religious pilgrimage.

But recreational travel wouldn't have been a thing for much of human history, because travel was difficult and too many people were too preoccupied to survive. Plus, because no one had ever done it before, it probably wouldn't have occurred to many people to do it.

And then, someone, somewhere, came up with the idea of "Hey, let's go over there for no particular purpose, just to look around!  It will be fun!"  No one in the history of the world had ever gone somewhere for no particular purpose before!  But this person did, and somehow the idea caught on.

5 comments:

laura k said...

That person must have been very wealthy, a member of the leisure class, and probably lived in the seat of Empire. I'm thinking British.

People went to the Expositions, where they saw the riches and exotica from all over the Empire, and they wanted to see where all that stuff came from. At the very least, they did the Grand Tour of Europe, to see the places in the paintings (Paris, Venice, Rome).

I'm guessing Victorians, after the Crystal Palace Exposition.

But that's my answer for everything.

impudent strumpet said...

Unless the first tourist came long before it was popularized. Or somewhere completely else - like some random Inca or something decided to go on a trip.

Or a variety of different people in different parts of the world each came up with the idea independently, but it never caught on and everyone just thought these early tourists were eccentrics.

laura k said...

Ah true, I'm thinking of the first society which normalized tourism. I think that has to Victorian England.

I wasn't thinking of the very first person, from a culture that didn't yet have the practice. A young person who hid out on a sailing ship because she dreamed of seeing the world. Or a wealthy nobleman who created a whole expedition for himself, just because.

Cool.

impudent strumpet said...

Imagine being the wealthy nobleman who created the expedition for himself just because, and having to explain to the expedition what you're doing. "No, this isn't a military campaign. No, don't go killing and looking those people, we're just going to look around! Well, okay, you can plant a flag if you really want to..."

laura k said...

I started thinking, nah, that guy never existed. But then I remembered, we're talking the whole history of the world! Somebody somewhere some time must have done that.