History of Wrestling

History of Wrestling “No sport is older or more widely distributed than wrestling” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Wrestling has been part of people’s life styles in hand-to-hand combat, to actual competition till one of the opponents die, and now present day where the sport is for winning but not causing death. Many people think that the Greeks made and started wrestling but records show around 3000 B.C. the Egyptians and Babylonian started wrestling. The Egyptians and Babylonian mainly used wrestling as hand-to-hand combat in warfare or two wrestlers will compete and use submissions to bring their opponent to death. As the same type of wrestling the Egyptians and Babylonians did, wrestling then was introduced to India and kept sprouting to China and Japan in the early B.C. era. For all of these regions wrestling was used but not as much as the Greeks, the Greeks from record were most popular for their wrestling. The Greeks changed the way of looking at wrestling, at this time era wrestling involved death in some cases but also it changed to an actual competitive sport that people now know as wrestling today with a few more rules.
On the Encyclopedia Britannica talks about, “Young men belonged to palaestras, or wrestling schools, as the focal point of their social life.” The Encyclopedia is saying that young men living in the Greece at this time era had to work as a wrestler and be a student as a wrestler, these young men was becoming warriors they did not have time for to socializing like people do today. As well as being so popular in Greece wrestling joined the 776 B.C Olympics and still is part of the Olympics today. The Olympics for wrestling had two championships in which the encyclopedia says they used, “A toppling event for the best two of three falls; and the pankration, which combined wrestling and boxing and ended in the submission of one contestant” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Wrestling was at its highest peak of popularity for the time era back then