Cliff Diving

The World’s Oldest Sports

Cliff diving to Olympic running - the most ancient of games

Written by Suzanne Locke - UAE

3 min readPublished on 16.07.2017 · 15:16 UTC

Did you know cliff diving was the oldest extreme sport in the world? Ahead of the Red Bull Cliff Diving world series final, coming to Dubai for the first time on 28 October, we take a look at the most ancient of sporting games.

Oldest extreme sport - cliff diving

The ancient Hawaiian sport of Lele Kawa saw brave divers leap feet-first from cliffs of at least 21m high, making no splash. King Kahekili - who was named after the Hawaiian god of thunder and who ruled Maui and O’ahu until 1794 - took the leap to prove his bravery, making his nakoa army follow suit. A true warrior king, he was said to have built a house made of the skeletons of tribal chiefs he defeated, and went so far as to tattoo half his body black in homage to his namesake god. Cliff diving was also part of the Mayan culture in southern Mexico; La Quebrada, the most famous diving cliff, is still a tourist attraction in the country today.

Oldest ball game - Mesoamerican ulama/ Tsu Chu

The first ball game is thought to have been a life-or-death type of Dodgeball, played with a 4kg rubber ball that could break bones or even kill, practised around 3,500 years ago in Mesoamerica, a region which extended from Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The ball, which had to be dunked through a hoop, represented the sun while the teams of five were the gods and demons. The losers are thought to have been sacrificed to the gods – so, actually, more like the Hunger Games than Dodgeball.

Perhaps even older is an ancient Chinese version of modern football called Tsu Chu. Players had to net a small leather ball in a hole without using their hands. It is thought to have been played between 5,000 and 500 BC.

Oldest Olympic sport - stade (running)

The first Olympics were held in 776 BC and consisted of just sport - the stade, a mid-distance run, made on foot, of around 210m. Later Games included wrestling, boxing, equestrian, discus, javelin and jumping. Ancient Olympians would compete in the nude: the word gymnasium comes from the Greek word root ‘gymnos’, meaning naked.

Oldest combat sport – wrestling

Prehistoric cave paintings have been found in Japan illustrating a sport that looks like sumo wrestling. Over in Egypt, a fragment of papyrus dating back to AD 267 has been translated and found to be a contract between two teenage wrestlers in Antinopolis, agreeing to fix the match. According to the contract, one of wrestler, Demetrius, would “fall three times and yield” in return for a bribe of 3,800 drachmas (enough to buy a donkey) from his competitor Nicantinous. Professional wrestling circuits were first seen in Paris in France in the 1830s.

Oldest team sport

Polo first appeared in Persia around 2,500 years ago, making it the oldest known team sport… and one for the rich and wealthy, as team members had to have their own horse. And these games were huge - elite training matches with the king’s cavalry could see up to 100 mounted players per side. Even women were partial to the sport: in the 6th century AD, a Persian queen and her waiting ladies are said to have challenged King Khosrow II and his men to a game. The modern game was developed in India during the time of the Raj; the first polo club dates back to 1833.