There have been many influences to the way sports are played today, and all of the sports you play, or even watch were played for the first time. Some of these tracing back all the way before 1400. The people back then might not have been playing it the same way we do today, but throughout the years, these sports have developed into what we know them as now. While some of them have become lost throughout these years, the remaining sports have developed substantially to develop into what they are today. The impact of these sports and the way that these early civilians played them greatly impacted the world and the way that we live in it. Although most sports, such as basketball or football, did not develop until the 19th or 20th century, many other sports have taken their origins from more primitive sports and pastimes of ancient times.
One of the oldest sports is wrestling, which dates back to fifteen thousand years ago in the French cave paintings. It involves grappling techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, used by one competitor on the other in order to assert their dominance. Wrestling is one of the oldest forms of combat that was included in the ancient Olympics as well, where it has held a prominent place in these games for hundreds of years. Another early form of combat includes boxing, where the earliest physical evidence came from the first known civilization, Samria, which is modern day Iraq. This evidence portrayed carvings, which are believed to have been made in the 3rd century BCE. It was eventually introduced by the Greeks in the 7th century during the ancient Olympic games, and has developed into what we know it as today. It would be interesting to see how a boxer from the 7th century would match up with a guy like Floyd Mayweather. I guess no one will ever know, but I would put my money on the 7th century fighter because back then, the two fighters would box with metal gloves with spikes usually until the death of one opponent. Nowadays, we use padded gloves, which still isn’t the safest, but metal gloves with spikes is just a whole different level of dangerous. That is how far we have come, though, because without deathly metal spike boxing matches, there would be no MMA or UFC or anything to do with that.
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The Olympic games played a huge part in sport developing. It introduced many events including discus throwing, the long jump, running, javelin throw, and, of course, wrestling. These 5 events were called the pentathlon, and were all held in one afternoon. The Greeks admired the bodies of pentathletes, because they possessed the ideal combination of length, strength, speed and beauty. The discus throwing is a track and field event in which an athlete throws a heavy disc (discus) in an attempt to mark a farther distance than their competitors. The early discs were made of unwrought bronze and iron and were apparently heavier than today's competitive discus. This ancient sport, as demonstrated by the fifth-century-BC Myron statue Discobolus (back page), has not really changed much throughout the years. It still consists of many competitors achieving the goal of throwing the disc the longest distance. Yes, the way they dressed has changed, because the ancient Greeks, in fact, did not dress. They were competing all of their events in the nude, and I am pretty sure we have developed from that and glad we have because when I watch the Olympics in 2020, I do not want to see Usain Bolt running the 400m with no clothes on! Back to the point though, every sport develops in some way and discus has not developed as much as some of the others because it does not require much. Speaking of not requiring much, running is the next event that humans have been doing since existence. It became an actual competitive sport when the first ever Olympics were held in 776 BC. During the Greek era there were four kinds of running events that were organized. The stadion was the oldest form of running. Runners sprinted for 1, 2 to 24 stades. A stade was equal to the length of the stadium. It was basically a track in today’s running. One of the most famous runners in these Olympics was Leonidas of Rhodes. Leonidas captured the crown in three separate foot races — the stadion, the diaulos, and the hoplitodromos. The diaulos was the double course for foot races in ancient Greece in which the contestants ran down one side of the stadium, turned round a goal, and returned to the starting point, and the hoplitodromos The hoplitodromos was an ancient foot race, part of the Olympic Games and the other Panhellenic Games. It was the last foot race to be added to the Olympics, first appearing at the 65th Olympics in 520 BC. Leonidus repeated captured the crown in the next three Olympics, in 160 BCE, in 156 BCE, and finally in 152 BCE at the age of 36. Leonidas's lifetime record of twelve individual Olympic victory wreaths was unmatched in the ancient world. Leonidus was the modern day Usain Bolt, setting unreal records at an unreal age. The last two sports are the javelin throw and the long jump.
The javelin throw is a track and field athletics event where a javelin is thrown by a competitor as far as possible, from the take off mark. The ancient Romans and Greeks were known to have used much lighter javelins than they are today, but they were not the first to throw a spear like pole. Ancient primitive hunters would use spears to kill animals for food. Then, the Greeks were the first recorded competitive use if the javelin in the pentathlon. Enough about javelins, the last sport in the pentathlon is the long jump, formerly known broad jump. The long jump, which is still in use today, was a sport in which athletes compete for supremacy by attempting to leap further distances from the take off point. Long jump was the only jumping event in the ancient Olympics. A major difference with the long jump today is that the Greeks held jumping weights of 1,5 to 2 kg in each hand. Thanks to these weights the athletes jumped further and landed more steadily. Experiments have shown that, with the modern jumping technique, the weights reduced the length of the jump and slowed the run up down. The Greeks clearly practiced a standing long jump, with their two feet together, in which case the weights do give them an advantage. Phayllos of Kroton was also a great pentathlete and one of the greatest long jumpers of these ancient times. He won twice in the pentathlon and once in the stadion. For these achievements he was honored with a statue at Delphi. His most known talent was the long jump. Once he jumped 55 feet (16.3 meters) and because the sandpit was only 50 feet (15.2 meters) long, he landed outside the pit. This achievement soon became proverbial. This jump, one of the few from Antiquity of which the exact distance is known, forms an important argument in the discussion whether the Greek long jump was a single or a multiple jump.
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