WEBVTT - How the First Olympics Worked

0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:03.760
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:13.760
<v Speaker 1>Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.640
<v Speaker 1>I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today by staff writer Joshua

0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:20.440
<v Speaker 1>m Clark. How's it going, josh, Let's going well, Candice?

0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:23.520
<v Speaker 1>How are you fabulous? So? Candice? I know you and

0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:26.720
<v Speaker 1>your fiance still love to run marathons? Right? Do you

0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.360
<v Speaker 1>watch the Olympics? Are you excited about the Olympics coming? Well? Okay,

0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:32.000
<v Speaker 1>I have a question for you today about some of

0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:35.599
<v Speaker 1>the early Olympics. The first Olympics, Um, the first recorded

0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:40.320
<v Speaker 1>Olympics was what's right? Okay, But there's evidence that it

0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.640
<v Speaker 1>goes back, you know, two fifty years before that, Yeah,

0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.680
<v Speaker 1>to like Greek god times when the zoos battled it

0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:49.120
<v Speaker 1>out and became king of the gods because he won

0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.479
<v Speaker 1>an Olympic events. And most of the evidence we have

0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:56.480
<v Speaker 1>is just legend, and we've had to discern you know,

0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:00.240
<v Speaker 1>what happened originally from just looking at pottery basically, right,

0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:02.720
<v Speaker 1>and a couple of poems written by people like Pliny

0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:07.200
<v Speaker 1>the Elder, Right, Okay, But but ultimately, um, we we

0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:10.240
<v Speaker 1>know that all of these legends, all these descriptions all

0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:13.280
<v Speaker 1>go back to the Olympics being started as a tribute

0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:17.160
<v Speaker 1>to Zeus, the god of gods on Mountain Olympus. Right, okay, Well,

0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.319
<v Speaker 1>so with the Olympics. Originally, UM, it was a one

0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:23.959
<v Speaker 1>day event and it was actually just a single event,

0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:28.440
<v Speaker 1>the stadium race, okay, which is them running six feet

0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:31.240
<v Speaker 1>and it was one day. I can't imagine that took

0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.680
<v Speaker 1>very long to to to hold that event, but UM

0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:39.240
<v Speaker 1>ultimately it caught on in such popularity that all these

0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:43.880
<v Speaker 1>generally warring city states that neighbored one another UM would

0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.640
<v Speaker 1>take on an Olympic truce during the Olympics and all

0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.880
<v Speaker 1>fighting would stop, all feuds would be off, so that

0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:55.120
<v Speaker 1>these UM Olympic athletes could come into Olympus where they

0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:59.920
<v Speaker 1>held the Olympics. Right, logically enough, UM and UM compete

0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.080
<v Speaker 1>for that one day. So they took it pretty seriously.

0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:06.320
<v Speaker 1>Right now, I've I've read your article pretty thoroughly and

0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.400
<v Speaker 1>I loved it on how how the first Olympics worked.

0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.320
<v Speaker 1>But I noticed that it was very male centric there.

0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:15.799
<v Speaker 1>There wasn't too much talk about women, and I had

0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:20.320
<v Speaker 1>heard that UM women actually were very much discouraged from

0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:23.040
<v Speaker 1>you know, even watching the Olympics, that they could be

0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:25.639
<v Speaker 1>killed for doing so. Is that fact or is that fiction?

0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.360
<v Speaker 1>Can you clear that up? That's actually a fact. Young

0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.880
<v Speaker 1>virgins could watch the Olympic events, but married women absolutely

0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:35.000
<v Speaker 1>were forbidden, and the punishment for sninking in and watching

0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:38.240
<v Speaker 1>the games was actually death. Women were hurled off the

0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.600
<v Speaker 1>pinnacle of Mount Type Hand, which stands about four ninety

0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:45.320
<v Speaker 1>feet high. And there's actually a pretty famous legend about

0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:49.320
<v Speaker 1>Collie Pittera who trained her son to compete in the Olympics,

0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:52.160
<v Speaker 1>and she herself came from a long line of Olympic victors,

0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:54.800
<v Speaker 1>and she snuck in. She was determined to watch her

0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:57.919
<v Speaker 1>son compete, and when he won, she was so excited

0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.839
<v Speaker 1>that she ran forward to congratulate, and her clothes were

0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:03.720
<v Speaker 1>ripped off of her in the process, and obviously it

0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:06.919
<v Speaker 1>was revealed that she was a woman, but because again

0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:09.639
<v Speaker 1>she had such Olympic routs, they decided to pardon her.

0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.600
<v Speaker 1>And there's actually no archaeological evidence that anyone was thrown

0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:15.640
<v Speaker 1>off the mountain. I guess they were looking for bones

0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.359
<v Speaker 1>at the base of Taipeian and they couldn't find them,

0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:21.359
<v Speaker 1>but women pretty much stayed away. They learned their last time.

0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.120
<v Speaker 1>Would do it for me it's yeah, pretty high. And

0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.680
<v Speaker 1>also toward the eighth century, a lot of the athletes

0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:30.839
<v Speaker 1>started competing naked. And maybe this was for momentum or

0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:33.200
<v Speaker 1>or you know, less traction when they were running, but

0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:35.280
<v Speaker 1>also it could have been an effort to discern whether

0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:39.320
<v Speaker 1>the competitors were men or women competing in disguise. I

0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:41.400
<v Speaker 1>imagine it just felt good. Yeah, you know, I get

0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.680
<v Speaker 1>the breeze in there. So if you want to learn

0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:45.880
<v Speaker 1>more about the First Olympics, you can read How the

0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.960
<v Speaker 1>First Olympics Worked on how stuff works dot com for

0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:52.480
<v Speaker 1>more on this than thousands of other topics. Because at

0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.760
<v Speaker 1>how stuff works dot com, let us know what you think.

0:03:56.040 --> 0:04:05.400
<v Speaker 1>Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.