Click photo for larger image.
This chart shows the evolution of ski widths from 3000 BC to current times. It’s pretty interesting to see that things have pretty much gone full circle with some of today’s skis having waists in the 130-140cm range. Even more wild is the fact that the skis of the early years were even constructed with rocker, twin tips and reverse camber.
It’s pretty tough to find images of these skis from the BC era.
maybe I can find an image of the Seth Flintstone in a very old K2 ad in the Bedrock Daily 🙂
ski’s of the BC era were in effect more like snowshoes
up to about 1920 the Germans called skiing “schilaufen” which means ski walking
a good description of the actual activity
skiing as we know it is relatively new
just take a look at gear that’s “only” 40 years old
don’t you just love modern technology!
[…] Teton AT pulled together this chart that shows average width of skis over the course of the last several thousand years—assuming you believe humans have been on this earth for that long and aliens didn’t plant us here with stacks of K2 KVCs, Olin Mark IVs, and dinosaur bones. What’s interesting about the chart is nothing, since a chart showing the historical width of skis is inherently uninteresting. I suppose some engineers out there might find it somehow compelling that skis used to be even wider than they’ve grown in the past few years. […]
[…] Here’s a funny graph of width over time: […]