History's Strangest Sports Traditions

A list of the weirdest and most fascinating trivia about ancient sports that I found.

1. Mayans played a game similar to basketball with human skulls.💀

2. Ancient Olympic runners ran stark naked. The tradition began when a runner lost his loincloth while running and tripped on it. Soon it became a tradition to run without any clothes on. And after a female coach was caught disguised as a man to coach her son (females were banned from participating or coaching in ancient Greece 😒), all coaches were required to be naked too (to prove they were males)!

3. Nudity even gave us the word gymnasium -- it is derived from the ancient Greek word for naked, gymnos.

4. One running event called Hoplitodromos required athletes to run decked out in full armor (while still naked!), The armor weighed 70 pounds- when they tried to recreate the sport recently, no one was able to go more than halfway of the 400 meters,

Amphora showing Hoplitodromos sport

5. Other sports required nudity as well-- in wrestling they wore no clothes but slathered oil on their bodies, which they scraped off with a special tool and offered to spectators after the match. And supposedly, the oil/mud/sweat filled gunk was very popular with fans!

6. Performance-enhancing aka doping was rampant in the ancient Olympics. The most popular performance enhancer was sheep testicles, but alternatives included live bees and lizard paste.

7. A mixed martial arts sport called Pankration allowed the wrestlers to do anything except biting (Mike Tyson would still be disqualified!), eye-gouging and beating testicles. One athlete was famous for breaking his opponents' fingertips, another died from suffocation but not before breaking his opponent's toes and being declared winner.

Amphora showing wrestling in ancient Olympics

Sources:

https://listverse.com/2016/12/13/10-weird-traditions-from-the-ancient-olympic-games/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-greece-olympics-sports

https://brewminate.com/pherenike-the-female-olympic-trainer-in-ancient-greece/

Comments

Rx Symbol

Have you ever wondered why medicines are denoted with an ℞ or Rx symbol? There are actually many theories about its origin but the most common one is that the symbol for prescriptions originated from the "Eye of Horus", which was an ancient Egyptian symbol associated with healing powers. According to Egyptian mythology, Horus lost his eye in battle but his mom used her powers to restore his eye, hence it became a symbol of healing. Eye of Horus In the 2 nd century, Greek physician Galen adapted this symbol to impress his patients. Galen’s influence on medicine was so strong that even the symbol was borrowed through the centuries and it eventually evolved into the modern symbol Rx (the eye of Horus kinda looks like an Rx). Other theories place its origin in Latin and Roman times. One theory is that Rx was used as an abbreviation of the Latin word recipere , meaning “to prepare,” which physicians wrote on medical prescriptions. Yet another theory points to the similarity of...

Concept of Qi

The Chinese (those who believe in Traditional Chinese Medicine) believe COVID-19 is caused by an imbalance of qi in the lungs. So what exactly is this qi? It has become a popular concept in the New Age movement, but it isn't very clear what it signifies, so I decided to dig a little deeper into it. Turns out, it is the fundamental basis of ancient Chinese medicine. Ancient Chinese medicine is based on the simple (in theory) principle that every system needs to be in harmony for health, well being and sustainability. When this harmony is broken, an imbalance is created in one direction and that leads to illness, disease, and many other sufferings. But it is more complicated than that- a system is not just a person, but everything that is interconnected and interdependent. That includes a family, community, environment… and the entire world. The harmony is created by two equal and opposite forces or elements: yin and yang. Qi (pronounced "chee") is the vital energy tha...

Origin of Neurology

As I consider majoring in neurobiology (the study of the biological mechanisms that control the nervous system) in college, I thought it would be interesting to delve into the origins of neuroscience. For hundreds of years from the ancient Egyptians to the Greeks, humans believed that the seat of intellect was the heart (which is why the ancient Egyptians went to great lengths to preserve the heart after death but discarded the brain!) The birth of neurology began 2500 years ago with Hippocrates who pondered over the purpose and functioning of the brain, reasoning that the brain must be the organ controlling sensation simply because most sensory organs - eyes, ears, and tongue -- are located close to the brain. This was starkly different from other opinions of the time which held that the heart was the main organ that controlled everything in humans. The brain was simply thought to be a "radiator" for pumping the heart and keeping it cool. Later, Hippocrates expanded ...

History of Medicine

Search This Blog