One of the reasons that I have lately been very absent from this blog is because I’m in the middle of taking my driver’s license — amongst many other things.

But thinking about driving as much as I currently am got me pondering: what is the history of transportation? We used to walk, then we began riding, and then we began sailing. After the industrial revolution new transportation options surged, with railroads, airplanes and cars. Today most people — at least in the western world — freely vary between transportation options all the time, driving their kids to school and themselves to work, then walking to the lunch spot before walking back to the office, grabbing the car once again at the end of the day to get home and pick their kids up. The following day they decide to be environmentally friendly and take the train. And several times a year, they jump on a plane to fly to far-off countries.

In fact, there’s probably nothing more human than moving around. After all, we started out as an ape in East Africa and today we’re covering the globe and even reaching out into space. You don’t accomplish that by staying still.

Which is why I decided that nothing would better fit my coming out of this hiatus than writing a series of posts on how we got around in the past. I’ll start with the most universal mode of transport: walking. Incidentally, this is also the most significant. Check out the post here.

After that, I’ll consider riding here, provide a post on the history of sailing which you can check out here, jump into the train here, cruise around in some nice (and less-so-nice) cars here, and finally take to the skies with airplanes and spacecrafts here. Oh, and since I’m Danish, I’ll have to write a history on the bicycle — it’s gonna be right here.

So fasten your seatbelts or get into your comfiest shoes as we’ll move through the history of human mobility over the next couple of weeks and months. It’ll be a ride to remember. Hopefully.

In the meantime, let me know what’s your favourite historical mode of transportation?