History of Tents – part 1

In The Beginning…

Okay, well maybe not the VERY beginning but not long after it man has made use of tents to provide shelter for himself, his livestock, his stores, and anything that needed protection from the elements. Not long after the man moved out of the Garden of Eden, within days if not hours I’m guessing, he (and she) were seeking shelter. In all likelihood that shelter came from animal skins and eventually they were stretched over frames of wood to create the first tents. 

As the ages passed tents became standard equipment. Nomadic tribes carried tents with them to erect at night to ward off a desert cold or to offer protection from windstorms. More sedentary people used them as well, shepherds who could be some distance from home might carry them along as they tended their flocks and herds. 

The tent was also a mainstay of armies throughout history. The simple tent provided basic shelter for an army on the move, housing the men of Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, Richard the Lionheart, Napoleon Bonaparte, George Washington, General Pershing, and General Patton, and the infantrymen who fought in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

It is the tent that provides shelter over the decades for young boys as they learn to live, interact and exist with nature through the Boy Scouts. For the adventurous a tent shelters on the packed ice of the arctic, the heights of a mountain side, and the verdant forests of the world.

As it was in the beginning, so it is today.