People have been ice skating for at least 3,000 years and the very earliest blades were fashioned from the metatarsi of horses (though cows were popular too). Skaters strapped the bones onto their feet with leather slipped through chiseled holes - as shown here, minus the 21st century buckle. Most of the ancient skates have been found in the cold northern parts of Europe where lakes cover more than 5 percent of the land.
This much scientists have had a fairly good handle on for some time. Pulling together data that demonstrates why humans would do such a thing has been tougher.
But last week scientists from the University of Milan and Oxford published a paper in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society showing that a high prevalence of frozen lakes could push people to develop ice skates because skating limited the energy required for travel.
There’s a basic assumption that it’s human nature to be in constant pursuit of greater convenience and lower energy output, hence we invented skis, bicycles, trains, cars and planes. The idea was to prove the same applied to ice skates.
With that in mind researchers Federico Formenti and Alberto Minetti tested the metabolic output of five adults wearing fabricated bone skates (don’t you wish you had a pair of those). Accounting for climate and varying terrain, they found that ice skating conserved as much as 10 percent of a person’s energy in certain areas as compared to walking in snow. This was most true in Finland where there are more than 60,000 lakes. Ten percent could have been the difference between life and death if you were an ancient fishermen or hunter during those cold winters with some hungry bellies to fill.
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