Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm fair Dowdy and I'm de bline A. Charcoal Boarding
Speaker 1: and to Blind at the Olympic are almost upon us,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be celebrating here at the podcast too
Speaker 1: with a few fun new sporting episode. Yes, and apparently
Speaker 1: we're do because we don't have too many sporting episodes.
Speaker 1: We did kind of a review of our catalog and
Speaker 1: didn't find too much. Yeah, so we were disappointed in that,
Speaker 1: and we're going to try to rectify the situation a
Speaker 1: little bit by having some cool sports episodes to get
Speaker 1: everyone excited about the events. And uh, we've already got
Speaker 1: one lined up on the wild nineteen hundred Paras Olympics,
Speaker 1: which featured everything from tug of war competitions to swimming
Speaker 1: races in the sun. So that's something to look forward to.
Speaker 1: It will be a fun one for sure. But since
Speaker 1: that Paris episode does cover a lot on the founding
Speaker 1: of the modern Olympics, we thought it might help to
Speaker 1: revisit a topic from the stuffy Miston History Class archives,
Speaker 1: an episode on the First Olympics, which took place back
Speaker 1: in seven in ancient Greece, the first Olympics, not the
Speaker 1: episode we haven't been recording for that long, right, that
Speaker 1: was back in two thousand eight, and former host Candice
Speaker 1: and Josh talked about the unsporting ancient tradition of throwing
Speaker 1: married women's spectators off the top of a mountain for
Speaker 1: a daring peak at the events. So not a very
Speaker 1: pleasant experience if you were a married woman, and the
Speaker 1: games themselves were just as violent. There were wrestling and
Speaker 1: boxing events that were very popular. They were used boxing
Speaker 1: gloves that were essentially just bands that were wrapped around
Speaker 1: the fighter's fists. They really just did more damage. They
Speaker 1: bloody your opponent up more than protect your hands and
Speaker 1: protect your opponent's faith. And there was also this sort
Speaker 1: of wrestling boxing hybrid, which, according to Greek mythology, was
Speaker 1: invented by to hear a theseus to fight the minotaur.
Speaker 1: There were also equestrian events like chariot races and um,
Speaker 1: you know, things that seem a little more traditional today
Speaker 1: to including foot races of different lengths, the long jump,
Speaker 1: the disc is throw, the pentathlon, um. And then victors too.
Speaker 1: They didn't just get the gold medal the silver medal
Speaker 1: or the bronze. They could get all sorts of trophies,
Speaker 1: ranging from cauldrons to olive oil to free meals for life.
Speaker 1: That one sounds pretty good. Repeat champions who won more
Speaker 1: than three events would even get statues placed in the
Speaker 1: Temple of Zeus at Olympia in their honor, so that
Speaker 1: was really the ultimate goal, lifelong honor in respect. So
Speaker 1: the lineup for the modern Games has of course changed
Speaker 1: pretty drastically, as has the admissions policies as well. Hear
Speaker 1: more about soon on Candics and Josh's podcast. But one
Speaker 1: ancient tradition that was clearly embraced by Pierre Baron de Coupiton,
Speaker 1: founder of the modern Games, is goodwill. The ancient Games
Speaker 1: were meant to show off the strength of athletic citizens,
Speaker 1: but also to bring Greek together for a peaceful event.
Speaker 1: In fact, to guarantee safety of the delegations traveling through
Speaker 1: sometimes hostile territory, an Olympic truce was necessary, and Josh
Speaker 1: talks a little bit more about this coming up in
Speaker 1: a second. The city state of Uless, which came up
Speaker 1: with the idea in the ninth century, would send out
Speaker 1: heralds before the games began and they would declare that
Speaker 1: truth truce was in effect and that all participants should
Speaker 1: have safe passage. And I think that's interesting to compare
Speaker 1: that idea of the ancient truths for the athletes to
Speaker 1: Kubatom's idea that quote, in order to respect one another,
Speaker 1: it is first necessary to know one another through sport.
Speaker 1: And I think that's still an idea that holds true today,
Speaker 1: at least in the most idealistic sense of the Olympic.
Speaker 1: Sure it's entertaining, but it should bring us together and
Speaker 1: let us all enjoy watching people compete at the highest level.
Speaker 1: So well said. On that note, let's take a listen
Speaker 1: to the old podcast Get out your Popcorn Deablina. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined
Speaker 1: day by staff writer Joshua m Clark. How's it going,
Speaker 1: josh It's going well, Candice. How are you as always? So, Candice,
Speaker 1: I know you and your fiance still love to run marathons. Right,
Speaker 1: so you watch the Olympics. Are you excited about the
Speaker 1: Olympics coming? Well, okay, I have a question for you
Speaker 1: today about some of the early Olympics. The first Olympics,
Speaker 1: UM the first recorded Olympics was what Okay, but there's
Speaker 1: evidence that it goes back, you know, two and fifty
Speaker 1: years before that to like Greek god times when Zoos
Speaker 1: battled it out and became king of the gods because
Speaker 1: he won an Olympic conventant and and most of the
Speaker 1: evidence we have is just legend, and we've had to
Speaker 1: discern you know, what happened originally from just looking at
Speaker 1: pottery basically, right, and a couple of poems written by
Speaker 1: people like Pliny the Elder, right, Okay, But but ultimately, um,
Speaker 1: we we know that all of these legends, all these descriptions,
Speaker 1: I'll go back to the Olympics being started as a
Speaker 1: tribute to Zeus, the god of gods, on Mount Olympus, right, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so with the Olympics. Originally, um, it was a one
Speaker 1: day event and it was actually just a single event,
Speaker 1: the Stadion race, okay, which is them running six feet
Speaker 1: and it was one day. I can't imagine that took
Speaker 1: very long to to to hold that event. But um,
Speaker 1: ultimately it caught on in such popularity that all these
Speaker 1: generally warring city states that neighbored one another, um would
Speaker 1: take on an Olympic troops during the Olympics and all
Speaker 1: fighting would stop, all feuds would be off, so that
Speaker 1: these UM Olympic athletes could come into Olympus where they
Speaker 1: held the Olympics. Right, logically enough, UM and UM compete
Speaker 1: for that one day, so they took it pretty seriously.
Speaker 1: Right now, I've UM, I've read your article pretty thoroughly
Speaker 1: and I loved it on how how the first Olympics works,
Speaker 1: But I noticed that it was very male centric there.
Speaker 1: There wasn't too much talk about women, and I had
Speaker 1: heard that UM women actually were very much discouraged from,
Speaker 1: you know, even watching the Olympics, that they could be
Speaker 1: killed for doing so. Is that factors that fiction? Can
Speaker 1: you clear that up? That's actually a fact. Young virgins
Speaker 1: could watch the Olympic event, but married women absolutely were forbidden,
Speaker 1: and the punishment for sneaking in and watching the games
Speaker 1: was actually death. Women were hurled off the pinnacle of
Speaker 1: Mount type Hangan, which stands about four ninety ft high.
Speaker 1: And there's actually a pretty famous legend about Calliptera, who
Speaker 1: trained her son to compete in the Olympics, and she
Speaker 1: herself came from a long line of Olympic victors. And
Speaker 1: she snuck in. She was determined to watch her son compete,
Speaker 1: and when he won, she was so excited that she
Speaker 1: ran forward to congratulate him, and her clothes were ripped
Speaker 1: off of her in the process, and obviously it was
Speaker 1: revealed that she was a woman, but because again she
Speaker 1: had such Olympic route, they decided to pardon her. And
Speaker 1: there's actually no archaeological evidence that anyone was thrown off
Speaker 1: the mountain. I guess they were looking for bones at
Speaker 1: the base of Tapaan and they couldn't find them, but
Speaker 1: women pretty much stayed away. They learned their last time.
Speaker 1: Would do it for me? It's yeah, pretty high. And
Speaker 1: also toward the eighth century, a lot of the athletes
Speaker 1: started competing naked. And maybe that's just for a momentum
Speaker 1: or or you know, less traction when they were running,
Speaker 1: but also it could have been an effort to discern
Speaker 1: whether the competitors were men or women competing in disguise.
Speaker 1: I imagine it just felt good. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: get the breeze in there. Well, that was a fun
Speaker 1: one to revisit and get us pumped up for the
Speaker 1: upcoming games and the upcoming podcast. Yeah, Olympics exactly. And
Speaker 1: if you want to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the First Olympics, the very first Olympics, Candice has an
Speaker 1: excellent article on our website. UM it's called how the
Speaker 1: First Olympics Worked appropriately enough and you can look that
Speaker 1: up by visiting our home page www. Dot Have stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com mm hmm for more on this and
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