The Discovery of Mountains: From Enigma to Exploitation

How have humans occupied or frequented mountain areas? What do we know of their first contacts with the unevenness and steep slopes, with the cold and snow, or the strong seasonal contrasts typical of mountains? And how did knowledge and the domain of mountains change with the technological advances of human societies? This has not been a primary concern of scientists, not even of geographers, even though advances in environmental sciences would help to understand the gradual transformations in the landscape and modifications introduced by humans in hydrological processes and soil erosion, as well as the extinction and cantonment of plant and animal species.