The Olympic Games, held every four years, are often considered the foremost sports competition in the world.

Many city-states began to emerge in Greece from the remnants of the Mycenaean civilisation (c. 1600-1100 BCE), perhaps as early as the 9th century BCE. They shared a common language, gods, and culture but engaged in almost constant war with one another.

Regular festivals dedicated to worshipped gods provided short truces between the warring states, allowing elites to meet, argue, and negotiate. As benign surrogates for war, they also arranged ritualised tests of physical fitness, which became a forerunner of modern athletics and started the Olympic Games.

Starting in 776 BCE, the Olympics were held every four years at Olympia in honour of Zeus, the supreme God of Greek mythology. The main events were wrestling, throwing, running, and boxing. With little or no restraints, the contests were intense and brutal, often resulting in many serious injuries. Only men could attend, and they competed in the nude. Victors were given an olive-branch crown, heralded at home, and were sometimes commemorated with statues.

All states participating in the Games had to obligate an Olympic truce so competitors, sponsors, and spectators could travel safely from distant hinterlands and the ends of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to Olympia. Numbers may have been modest at first, but in the fifth century BCE, an enlarged stadium could accommodate even a crowd of forty thousand.

The Olympic Games remained a regular fixture in the ancient world for over a thousand years. In the late fourth century CE, Christianity became a Roman state religion, and after the Games of 393 CE, the Olympics were banned as a pagan festival by Emperor Theodosius I.

One and a half millennia later, the Olympic Games were revived in Athens as a brainchild of a French Baron, Pierre de Coubertin, who believed in the uplifting effect of sports, not just for participants but for the whole world. On Easter Monday, 1896, a crowd of 80,000 packed into a restored Panathenaic Stadium, originally built in the fourth century BCE, to witness the start of the first modern Olympics.

Bibliography

Wyse, E. 2022. A History of the Classical World the Story of Ancient Greece and Rome. London, United Kingdom: Arcturus Publishing. 303 p. ISBN 9781398808041. Pages 29-30, 52-53.

Beaton, R. 2021. The Greeks a Global History. London, United Kingdom: Faber & Faber. 588 p. ISBN 9780571353576. Pages 88-89, 107, 263, 419-420.

Heneage, J. 2021. The Shortest History of Greece. Exeter, United Kingdom: Old Street Publishing. 242 p. ISBN 9781910400869. Pages 24, 155-157.

Potter, W. 2023. Homo Sapiens the History of Humanity And the Development of Civilization. London, United Kingdom: Arcturus Publishing Limited. 256 p. ISBN 9781788280914. Pages 84-87.

Hohti, P. 2021. Bysantti Tuhat Draaman Vuotta. Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. 621 p. ISBN 9789510444658. Pages 70-71.

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1800 BCE
Beginnings of monotheistic religions

Religion is a set of human beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the Universe based on faith in something supernatural that many call God. Whereas polytheists believe in many Gods, monotheists worship only one. Today, more than half of the population on Earth is either Christians or Muslims (monotheists). Hinduism (polytheistic) is the third most common religion, while atheism (a lack of belief in gods) is rising as science can explain many phenomena that were once beyond human understanding (the reason leading people to believe in the supernatural).