The Early Olympics: The Origin Of The Ancient Olympics

The Early Olympics was an original festival to honor the god of thunder Zeus. It was a series of competitions between athletes from different poleis in ancient Greece. The first Olympics games were supposedly dated in 776 BC. During this time the ancient games origins were attributed to gods and others competing for the win in the games. (https://www.penn.museum/sites/olympics/olympicorigins.shtml)

The early myths regarding the origins of the games they were described to be the Greek historian, Pausanias.

The story is supposedly told that the “dactyl Hercules” and his four brothers, Paeonaeus, Epimedes, Iasius, and Idas, all raced at Olympia to entertain the newborn baby Zeus. The events were originally associated with funeral rituals, particularly

Pankration is an ancient martial art which mixes wrestling and boxing. This sport first began in second millennium BCE in the territory of ancient Greece. The term stands for all strength. In 648 BCE, the Pankration was introduced as a sporting event in the 33rd Olympic Games where it joined boxing and wrestling in a category called the heavy events.

This sport was a crowed favorite, because of the military style fighting and the unarmed combat style made the fights, or interesting. In pankration was allowed except, biting, gouging (stabbing with your finger in your opponent’s eye, nose, or mouth) and attacking genitals. Even with the violent act, it did gain fans like Alexander the Great, who used the Pankration winners/survivors as recruitment for his army. (www.britishmuseum.org/PDF/british_museum_olympic_games.pdf)

According to stories, fighter Arrhichion of Phigalia won a Pankration competition at the Olympic Games was literally dying while competition was still going on. He explained how he was locked in a tight chokehold that almost could have killed him. To have a chance to get out of it, he had to break his opponent ankle in order to get out of it, but at the same time his competitor raised a finger for submission. Arrichion was dead, but in his honor became a dead