The sport in prehistory
and the
Ancient civilizations
An introduction:
There is a prevalent wrong around the world of many historians in our present time about their general view and decision of classifying the history of sport as the history of “games”, or history of “time wasting”!!
But our general view here about the history of sport is radically different, that we look at the history of sport and classify it as the history of human social relations, the history of human superiority natural instinct, or by a more concentrated meaning it’s the history of human from all sides, and we cannot ignore it because the human history philosophy as I see it, is a thick ball of complicated relations between human, who is the center, and the variable social, economical and political changes , therefore we cannot study the history in a single way and that’s another prevalent wrong too !
But for a positive, active and comprehensive way of studying history we have to take into the consideration of the history of sport in prehistory and the ancient civilizations or “the first big human print of urbanization “ in these few lines, moreover we hope here to change some negative ideas about the sport history from the history of time wasting games to a better ideas as the history of human civilized existence!
Sport in prehistory:
In prehistory, when there were a small and tribal human societies forms in vast plain lands (the origin of big civilizations as Hegel said), which will be latterly the big ancient civilization seeds, or in remote islands, there were strong relations between the sport squares and the main temples!
As another strongest relation between sport itself with the art world from painting on caves rocks to the holy and public variable ritual dancing with the odor of old incense!
And that absolutely means that sport was a holy action like worship and art itself, and there was no difference between a brave and strong sportsman who swam in a streaming river, and the priest who gave him the gods and goddesses blesses, or the painter who drew and painted this sportsman heroism on the cave rocks to be an immortal holy hero!
Swimming, ball and beads games, running, archery, hunting and wrestling were all an excellent examples of prehistory time sports, and there are a lot of evidences and painting on caves in many places, such as the Libyan dessert which confirm the fact that swimming is one of the oldest sports in humankind history!! *
Sport in ancient china:
In addition of the great civilization of china forerunners inventions and explorations like ink, paper and tea to fireworks, there were also in old china a forerunners athletic activities such as gymnastic, dangerous acrobats and long jumping activities which were all coherent with the religion, economics, politic, war and nationalistic celebrations mixed in a continuously development relations! **
For example in the time of the western Zhou dynasty (1066-771 BC) archery and cauldron lifting had emerged as sports activities in their own right.
In early china there were an early sports activities like rowing race, horsemanship, fencing, and archery beside an old game in Quin dynasty (221-206 BC) time called “Jiaodi “, which is like wrestling in modern time.
We can’t ignore the important development of sports activities in the time of Qin, Han and the three kingdoms periods (221 BC - AD 280) in which there was a visible enormous celebrations of an intermixture in art, music, poem and sports activities especially the dangerous acrobats and hard gymnastics.
Or the Tang dynasty period when there were an early rising and emergence of women different sports activities! ***
http://www.us.sis.gov.eg/egyptinf/history/html/hisfrm.htm
Sport in ancient Egypt:
If the ancient Greek sportsmen have song to the sacred mount Olympus, the ancient Egyptians certainly had song before them to the great Nile river, which have nurtured some of them sports activities peculiarities like swimming, fishing and rowing races!
From many ancient Egyptians painting on the wall we can say that the ancient Egyptians have taken a professional and a sacred care to their brunet slim bodies to exercise in a wide numbers of sports activities such as, athletic, archery, boxing, fencing, ball games, wrestling, hockey, weightlifting, equestrian sports, knife throwing and yoga!!
And we cannot forget to thank the ancient Egyptians for their organize of the first kind of sports activities competitions! ****
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/wrestling.html
Sport in ancient Greece:
We are all today thankful to the ancient Greece civilization for its Olympic games, which were held every four years in the sacred mount Olympus, but it was different from today because it wasn’t in the ancient Greece time a pure sport celebration, it was a religious, cultural, artistic, poetic and heroic celebration as we have said before in our short introduction!
The Olympic games itself have showed many sports activities such as the Greek wrestling, marathon running, boxing, javelin and discus throwing, and chariot racing.
In addition of all olymbic games sports activites , the ancient Greece gave us a mexture of develobed military sports activities too and many sports activities original rules and morals and arbitration preferences !
*****
A conclusion:
In conclusion of all of this summarized history of sport in prehistory and the ancient civilization, I hope now we establish a new set of beliefs and ideas about the right understanding of sport history, which cannot be remove from the human social, cultural, economic, political reactions history map.
The sources and references:
It is the relevant site to every one, who hopes to find rich reliable information about the monuments of Libyan Desert and other old places in the world,
And it provides rich reliable information about sports in prehistory stage in an easy way.
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sport - Ancient_China
This site is a free encyclopedia or as I prefer to call it a never-ending project by different international languages, which are written by it’s readers!
And it provides a huge amount of an information in many sorts, that have been checked before editing on the web site from many qualified specialists tutors, its subject are rely on a wide number of famous reliable sources.
You can look in this site to many pictures and illustrations about the chosen subject. There are a lot of links to the sources that you can read more in it about your subject.
This site is providing to you an easy way to save your times, and find much detailed information without wasting time. It’s a balanced review with a never-ending number of authors, beside that I think it develops the self-study independent skills too!
****http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa032301a.htm
****http://www.ioa.leeds.ac.uk/1980s/84085.htm
The author in this site provides rich general information, that cannot be doubted and I think his perspective here can create a balance view.
*****http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/wrestling.html