OLYMPIC HISTORY—FROM THE HOME OF ZEUS
IN OLYMPIA TO THE MODERN GAMES
“At its heart the Ancient Olympic Games was a religious festival held in a religious sanctuary,” Paul Christesen, professor of Ancient Greek History at Dartmouth College, USA, explained, “it was not just a matter of playing sports.” And central to this concept was the site itself. Olympia lay on the north-western corner of the Peloponnese(currently in the Western Greece Region). Zeus, King of the Greek Gods, was said to have taken up residence in Olympia around 1200 BC when the Eleans conquered the surrounding area. The fearsome deity marked his ascension by hurling a thunderbolt into the sacred grove from his home atop Mount Olympus.
From the first edition in 776 BC until 550 BC, the Games took place among the sanctuary itself. The sacred olive tree of Zeus, from which the victory wreaths were cut, marked the finishing line for all races. The first stadium, a simple affair using the natural embankments of the surrounding hills, remained within the deified area too. The discovery of more than 150 wells dating to this time indicates that even this early in the life of the Olympic Games, they attracted considerable attention.
By the mid fourth century BC the third incarnation of the stadium was built. Spacious and with the look and feel of a more modern venue, spectator attendance grew by around 50%. The position of the stadium had been shifted, with events no longer finishing at the altar of Zeus. However, the site lost none of its religious potency during the vast majority of the 1000-plus years of the Ancient Games, its diversity being key to its survival.
”Anyone who wanted to get a big audience from all over the Greek world showed up in Olympia. Painters, artists, orators all went there to put their wares on display,” Christesen said. “We know there was total chaos for a week because anyone who wanted to raise their profile, this was the place and time to do it.”
As well as competition, training took place at Olympia. At first this happened outdoors but during the Hellenistic period(323 BC-31 BC)the palestra and the gymnasium were built. Home to practitioners of wrestling, boxing, pankration and the long jump, the palestra’s main feature was a large, square inner-courtyard. It was flanked by colonnades and had an extensive bathing system in the adjoining rooms. The gymnasium was an elongated rectangle with space for both the javelin and discus throwers to do their thing. Both buildings were centres of intellectual debate and learning, with philosophers and teachers taking advantage of the shade and abundance of young minds.
By the Roman period these training facilities, along with the rest of the site, had, quite apart from the religious aspect, become a year—round tourist attraction. “People put up big fancy artworks and dedications, so it became a famous site to go see Greek art,” Christesen said. ”Certainly by the Roman period there were people making a living as guides to the site.”
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Getting rid of dirt, in the opinion of most people, is a good thing. However, the attitudes to dirt are always changing.
In the early 16th century, people thought that dirt on the skin was a means to block out disease, and washing off dirt with hot water could open up the skin and let ills in. A particular danger was thought to lie in public baths. By 1538, the French king had closed the bath houses in his kingdom. The king of England did something similar in 1546. Thus began a long time when the rich and the poor in Europe lived with dirt in a friendly way. France’s Henry IV was famously dirty. Upon learning that a nobleman had taken a bath, the king ordered that, to avoid the attack of disease, the nobleman should not go out.
Though the belief above was long-lived, dirt has no longer been regarded as a nice neighbour ever since the 18th century. Scientifically speaking, cleaning away dirt is good to health. Clean water supply and hand washing are practical means of preventing disease. Yet, it seems that standards of cleanliness have moved beyond science since World War II. Advertisements repeatedly sell the idea; clothes need to be whiter than white, cloths ever softer, surfaces to shine. Has the hate for dirt, however, gone too far?
Attitudes to dirt still differ hugely nowadays. Many first-time parents nervously try to warn their children off touching dirt, which might be responsible for the spread of disease. On the contrary, Mary Ruebush, an American immunologist(免疫学家) , encourages children to play in the dirt to build up a strong immune system. And the latter position is gaining some ground.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I love digging in the back garden. Sometimes, I’d dig for pottery and stuff, but I’ve always wanted to find a fossil (化石). I like finding out about the past. At school, my favourite subject is history. I’ve been watching Andy’s Prehistoric Adventures since I was three. I knew I had a good chance of finding a fossil, because my house was built on a muddy, limestone substrate (石灰岩基质), in Walsall, which means millions of years ago, my garden wasn’t my garden at all—it was a coral reef (珊瑚礁).
On 22 March, it was a sunny day. I came back from school. I asked Dad if I could dig in my favourite spot by the yellow bush near our house, where we had planted potatoes and onions, but he told me not to, because he’d just moved a tree there and it was establishing roots. I went to the back garden instead, taking Dad’s old brown wooden garden tools. I dug a big hole, about a foot deep, which didn’t take very long, where I found a ball of mud with something pointy sticking out the top. I ran into the kitchen screaming. I was so excited. I knew it was a fossil.
At first, I thought it might be a deer’s tooth or a goat’s claw. When Dad washed the mud off, we saw that it had lots of bumpy, wavy lines; we both thought it looked like one of the sea anemones, from the fish tank in his office, but with a horn(触角). Dad sent a video to the Fossil Finds UK Facebook group. A man calling himself an archaeologist (考古学家) replied saying it had the markings of a horn coral from the Palaeozoic era, which is the very beginnings of life on Earth. I had found one of the oldest fossils in England.
We looked in my books and online for more information. We typed our postcode into a British Geology Survey search where you can find out what you’re standing on—ours is the oldest substrate in the area, with lots of clay and limestone, but it’s unusual to find anything so close to the surface. Experts told us that my horn coral lived between 415 million and 480 million years ago. There weren’t even proper fish or sharks then.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式作答。
Before the horn coral, the only fossils I was familiar with were shark teeth that Dad got me.
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When I grow up, I want to be an archaeologist (考古学家).
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| 出生年月 | 1938年7月 |
| 主要贡献 | 1. 建立“数字敦煌”； 2. 编写了许多与敦煌莫高窟相关的书籍。 |
| 评价 | 2019年9月，被授予“文物保护杰出贡献者”国家荣誉称号。 |
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