The History of Ecotourism
Ecotourism is often looked at as a modern phenomenon, something that happened when environmentally-aware people started getting enough money together in their lives to travel to those places they’d only read about. This is just not true. Ecotourism is as old as tourism itself.
In fact, ecotourism history is embedded in the literature of Western civilization: Caesar’s travelogues from Britain and Gaul, Marco Polo’s exploration, and Aristotle’s stories of the strange people of Egypt are all precursors to modern ecotourism. These xamples did not have tourism as their main goal, but rather conquest, trade, and the pursuit of knowledge took center stage. (more…)