Origins of Parkour - Episode 1: The monkeys

This work is something I wanted to do for a long time. I was thinking of how much some species of animals were involved in the conception of the whole set of basic parkour techniques. In fact, the first generation’s traceurs claimed themselves to be influenced by animals and said in interviews they used to watch documentaries about monkeys and felines to get inspired. Anyway, they didn not explain in details how animals had inspired them, and the way they used what they saw in their trainings then. But we could possibly think some techniques were directly copied from the animals, which is quite interesting. We know David Belle and his father are the ones that conceptualised parkour, but it could be interesting to think about what inspired them to do so. Of course, we also know Georges Hébert and his “natural method“ was a huge source of inspiration for them. But animals, due to their conditions of living (eat or being eaten: hunt animals in order to have anything to eat; escape from i