If you believe that the civilizations that lived before the creation of the computer led a boring lifestyle, you are definitely wrong. Both aristocrats and ordinary peasants were always ready for entertainment. And the ways in which this happened were not always the safest. And, from today’s perspective, they are, to say the least, strange.
Board games
The first board games were created in ancient times. For example, a board game from ancient Egypt called Senet is one of the oldest games in the world. Details about the rules are unclear, but it is apparently played by two people – much like modern chess.
According to legend, Senet was created by Thoth, the god of wisdom, who challenged Konsu, the moon god, and thereby gained a few extra days to the year. Thoth does this because of Nut – the goddess of the sky, who, due to the curse of the god Ra, could not give birth to a child on any day of the year. Thanks to Thoth’s victory, the year was extended by 5 days.
Gladiator fights
We are all used to these bloody public spectacles, but how many of us know that it was not only men who fought each other or against wild animals in the arena? Did you know that there were women among the Gladiators? They were generally seen as “fake” gladiators who were only for fun and not for real combat.
Deadly battles were so loved that all attempts to ban them failed – until 404,
when the Christian priest Telemachus tried to stop a fight between gladiators. This action of his cost him his life and he was stoned to death by the enraged public. However, his sacrifice was not in vain – Emperor Honorius was so impressed by the monk’s martyrdom that he banned the games forever.
The tug of war game
Tug of war was an extremely popular pastime in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. It was of two types. In the first type, the wooden stick served as a barrier between two participants. The winner is the one of them who managed to make the other one fall to his knees. In the second type, the participants try to pull their opponent by both holding onto the wooden stick. Today, a similar version of the game is known as mas-wrestling.
The phrenology sessions
Phrenology has been considered a pseudoscience since its inception. she argued that the structure of the skull determines human character, and that by the shape of the cranial bones one can judge a person’s complex mental qualities. Although not accepted as a real science, phrenology was extremely popular during the period 1850 – 1890. Thanks to its fame, many traveling phrenologists appeared in whom people showed great interest wherever they went.
Show programs with extraordinary people, often called “monsters”
They were even more popular than modern television programs,
as previous generations loved watching physically disabled people. Disabled people, or “monsters” as they were called, were paid huge sums of money to display their disabilities in every part of the world.
“The Headless Girl”
An unusual live headless girl show became famous in the US and Europe in the late 1930s. The women were known as Olga, Tina and Miss Yvette. The “Doctors” tried to convince the audience that the women had lost their heads in accidents, but were still able to move with the help of inexplicable technology.
Cramming into phone booths
An extraordinary fashion emerged in the 1950s all over the world – young people did everything possible to squeeze into a phone booth until there was no room left. It is not clear where it all started, but it was obviously a lot of fun for the youngsters.
#Weird #pastimes #distant
