Ted Audio Collective You're listening to Ted Talk's Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.
I'm your host, Elise Hugh.
As we watch the world's best athletes represent their countries at the Olympic Games, we thought it would be fun to look back at how this all got started, so many thousands of years ago.
After Armand Dangoor takes us back in time to ancient Olympiads and connects it to the modern games we're all enjoying.
It's coming up after a break.
Thousands of years in the make, what began as part of a religious festival honoring the Greek god Zeus in the rural Greek town of Olympia has today become the greatest show of sporting excellence on Earth.
The inception date in 776 BC became the basis for the Greeks' earliest calendar, where time was marked in four year increments called Olympiads.
What could it be? Why? It's the Olympic Games, of course.
Competition fosters excellence, or so thought the ancient Greeks, in addition to sporting events, contests were held for music, singing, and poetry.
You can read about them all yourself in classical literary works like Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Ineid, even mythical heroes appreciate a good contest every now and then, wouldn't you say?
For the first 13 games, the ancient Greek Olympics featured just one event, the 200-yard dash, but over time, new exciting contests like boxing, cherry-a-denual racing, and even a foot race where the competitors wore a full suit of armor enticed men who pulled champions into the Olympic stadium, the combined running, jumping, wrestling, jabbalon throwing,
and hurling the discus event known as the Pentathlon, inspired world class competition, and the pan-cratian, a no-holds bar fight where only biting and eye gouging were prohibited.
Short the toughest men were victorious, and victorious they were.
Nobody tops the local baker, Coroibus, who in 776 BC became the very first Olympic champion, and will never forget or sippess of Negorai.
The 720 BC Olympic victor tore away his loincloth so he could race unimpeded, inaugurating the ancient Greek tradition of competing in the nude.
Now there's a winning streak if ever we've seen one, but all gone things must end.
In 391 AD, the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius and pagan practices saw the world soon bid a fond farewell to the Olympic Games.
And now back to the episode.
But just like those early pan-cratian athletes, you can't keep a good one down.
And 1500 years later, in 1896, the modern Olympic Games kicked off in Athens, Greece.
Today, the summer and winter Olympics bring international world class athletes together by the thousands, uniting fans by the billions for the world's foremost sporting competition.
CTS, Altius, Fortius, three cheers for the Olympics.
That was Educator Armand Dangoor for Ted Ed.
If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at Ted.com slash curation guidelines.
And that's it for today.
Ted Talks Daily is part of the Ted Audio Collective.
This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar.
You is mixed by Christopher Faisy-Bogan, additional support from Emma Taubner, Daniela Balarezo, and Will Hennessey.
I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
Thanks for listening.
