Were the Ancient Greek Athletes Tougher Than Today's Olympians?

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTclWw4Q56oGKhsmf4TqXfmF9Cbh3qYUARYiiGRgRIpvUC7FZu9wfNz2B-3ed96QQcatPgVxskbwaouYaG7i5ya3konFn0Po_KUcH33IRZZMHyzoC5dawP5zs6mqJmvwsXGmj2FfRiyn0/s1600/Greek_-_Wrestlers_-_Walters_54742.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTclWw4Q56oGKhsmf4TqXfmF9Cbh3qYUARYiiGRgRIpvUC7FZu9wfNz2B-3ed96QQcatPgVxskbwaouYaG7i5ya3konFn0Po_KUcH33IRZZMHyzoC5dawP5zs6mqJmvwsXGmj2FfRiyn0/s320/Greek_-_Wrestlers_-_Walters_54742.jpeg" width="252" /></a></div>The Games of the XXX Olympiad are under way in London, with China and the United States taking the early lead in the medal count. Last week, Slate visualized Olympic competitions between 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century athletes. How would the ancient Greeks, who invented the Olympic Games, compete against today’s athletes?<br /><br />Probably not well. Ancient athletes could have held their own in the first modern Olympic Games of 1896. Phayllos of Croton, for example, hurled the discus 95 feet in the Pythian games around 500 B.C. Although that distance is approximate—Greeks measured distance in actual human feet—it would have put him in the running for a medal at the 1896 Olympic competition. Phayllos probably would have bested American Robert Garrett’s 95.6-foot throw if he had used modern tools and techniques. Ancient hurlers likely used a heavier discus and took only a three-quarter turn before releasing it, rather than the two-and-a-quarter turns that modern athletes use. Variations aside, Phayllos wouldn’t have stood a chance against 21st-century athletes: The current world record is more than 243 feet.<br /><br />Historians have puzzled over records from ancient long-jump competitions. Athletes posted distances of well over 50 feet—nearly double the current world long-jump record. Many classicists assume that the event was actually a triple jump, although that still puts the ancients surprisingly close to the modern record. The ancient competition was quite different from the modern version, however. The Greeks probably started from a standstill and swung handheld weights, known as halteres, to provide momentum on takeoff and allow them to extend their feet farther forward on landing.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/explainer/2012/07/london_olympics_would_ancient_greek_athletes_have_stood_a_chance_in_today_s_competition_.html" target="_blank">Click here to read the rest of this article from Slate Magazine</a></b>

Were the Ancient Greek Athletes Tougher Than Today's Olympians?

The Games of the XXX Olympiad are under way in London, with China and the United States taking the early lead in the medal count. Last week,...

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Oar walking, underwater wrestling and horse fighting – historian examines the sports and games of the Vikings

<br />Playing ball games is an activity played by children around the world. While today’s parents might worry that their sons and daughters might get scrapes and bruises, in the Viking world such a game could end with an axe being driven into an opponent’s head.<br /><br />This detail comes from a new article, ‘What the Vikings did for fun? Sports and pastimes in medieval northern Europe’, which was published last month in the journal World Archaeology. In it Leszek Gardeła of the University of Aberdeen uses saga accounts and archaeological evidence to see what men, women and children from Scandinavia and Iceland amused themselves with during the Viking-era, and found that their were several popular pastimes.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.medievalists.net/2012/07/02/oar-walking-underwater-wrestling-and-horse-fighting-historian-examines-the-sports-and-games-of-the-vikings/" target="_blank">Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net</a></b><br />

Oar walking, underwater wrestling and horse fighting – historian examines the sports and games of the Vikings

Playing ball games is an activity played by children around the world. While today’s parents might worry that their sons and daughters might...

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