Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today by staff writer Joshua m Clark. How's it going, josh, Let's going well, Candice? How are you fabulous? So? Candice? I know you and your fiance still love to run marathons? Right? Do you watch the Olympics? Are you excited about the Olympics coming? Well? Okay, I have a question for you today about some of the early Olympics. The first Olympics, Um, the first recorded Olympics was what's right? Okay, But there's evidence that it goes back, you know, two fifty years before that, Yeah, to like Greek god times when the zoos battled it out and became king of the gods because he won an Olympic events. And most of the evidence we have is just legend, and we've had to discern you know, what happened originally from just looking at pottery basically, right, and a couple of poems written by people like Pliny the Elder, Right, Okay, But but ultimately, um, we we know that all of these legends, all these descriptions all go back to the Olympics being started as a tribute to Zeus, the god of gods on Mountain Olympus. Right, okay, Well, so with the Olympics. Originally, UM, it was a one day event and it was actually just a single event, the stadium race, okay, which is them running six feet and it was one day. I can't imagine that took very long to to to hold that event, but UM ultimately it caught on in such popularity that all these generally warring city states that neighbored one another UM would take on an Olympic truce during the Olympics and all fighting would stop, all feuds would be off, so that these UM Olympic athletes could come into Olympus where they held the Olympics. Right, logically enough, UM and UM compete for that one day. So they took it pretty seriously. Right now, I've I've read your article pretty thoroughly and I loved it on how how the first Olympics worked. But I noticed that it was very male centric there. There wasn't too much talk about women, and I had heard that UM women actually were very much discouraged from you know, even watching the Olympics, that they could be killed for doing so. Is that fact or is that fiction? Can you clear that up? That's actually a fact. Young virgins could watch the Olympic events, but married women absolutely were forbidden, and the punishment for sninking in and watching the games was actually death. Women were hurled off the pinnacle of Mount Type Hand, which stands about four ninety feet high. And there's actually a pretty famous legend about Collie Pittera who trained her son to compete in the Olympics, and she herself came from a long line of Olympic victors, and she snuck in. She was determined to watch her son compete, and when he won, she was so excited that she ran forward to congratulate, and her clothes were ripped off of her in the process, and obviously it was revealed that she was a woman, but because again she had such Olympic routs, they decided to pardon her. And there's actually no archaeological evidence that anyone was thrown off the mountain. I guess they were looking for bones at the base of Taipeian and they couldn't find them, but women pretty much stayed away. They learned their last time. Would do it for me it's yeah, pretty high. And also toward the eighth century, a lot of the athletes started competing naked. And maybe this was for momentum or or you know, less traction when they were running, but also it could have been an effort to discern whether the competitors were men or women competing in disguise. I imagine it just felt good. Yeah, you know, I get the breeze in there. So if you want to learn more about the First Olympics, you can read How the First Olympics Worked on how stuff works dot com for more on this than thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com, let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today by staff writer Joshua m Clark. How's it going, josh, Let's going well, Candice? How are you fabulous? So? Candice? I know you and your fiance still love to run marathons? Right? Do you watch the Olympics? Are you excited about the Olympics coming? Well? Okay, I have a question for you today about some of the early Olympics. The first Olympics, Um, the first recorded Olympics was what's right? Okay, But there's evidence that it goes back, you know, two fifty years before that, Yeah, to like Greek god times when the zoos battled it out and became king of the gods because he won an Olympic events. And most of the evidence we have is just legend, and we've had to discern you know, what happened originally from just looking at pottery basically, right, and a couple of poems written by people like Pliny the Elder, Right, Okay, But but ultimately, um, we we know that all of these legends, all these descriptions all go back to the Olympics being started as a tribute to Zeus, the god of gods on Mountain Olympus. Right, okay, Well, so with the Olympics. Originally, UM, it was a one day event and it was actually just a single event, the stadium race, okay, which is them running six feet and it was one day. I can't imagine that took very long to to to hold that event, but UM ultimately it caught on in such popularity that all these generally warring city states that neighbored one another UM would take on an Olympic truce during the Olympics and all fighting would stop, all feuds would be off, so that these UM Olympic athletes could come into Olympus where they held the Olympics. Right, logically enough, UM and UM compete for that one day. So they took it pretty seriously. Right now, I've I've read your article pretty thoroughly and I loved it on how how the first Olympics worked. But I noticed that it was very male centric there. There wasn't too much talk about women, and I had heard that UM women actually were very much discouraged from you know, even watching the Olympics, that they could be killed for doing so. Is that fact or is that fiction? Can you clear that up? That's actually a fact. Young virgins could watch the Olympic events, but married women absolutely were forbidden, and the punishment for sninking in and watching the games was actually death. Women were hurled off the pinnacle of Mount Type Hand, which stands about four ninety feet high. And there's actually a pretty famous legend about Collie Pittera who trained her son to compete in the Olympics, and she herself came from a long line of Olympic victors, and she snuck in. She was determined to watch her son compete, and when he won, she was so excited that she ran forward to congratulate, and her clothes were ripped off of her in the process, and obviously it was revealed that she was a woman, but because again she had such Olympic routs, they decided to pardon her. And there's actually no archaeological evidence that anyone was thrown off the mountain. I guess they were looking for bones at the base of Taipeian and they couldn't find them, but women pretty much stayed away. They learned their last time. Would do it for me it's yeah, pretty high. And also toward the eighth century, a lot of the athletes started competing naked. And maybe this was for momentum or or you know, less traction when they were running, but also it could have been an effort to discern whether the competitors were men or women competing in disguise. I imagine it just felt good. Yeah, you know, I get the breeze in there. So if you want to learn more about the First Olympics, you can read How the First Olympics Worked on how stuff works dot com for more on this than thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com, let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.