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LOL. I'm imagining cavemen walking briskly away from elephants and bears Olympics-style because running simply hadn't been invented yet.

• oh_sigh 5y ago
  Seems silly - not quite running, but consider that Europeans forgot how to swim efficiently and really only had the doggy paddle until they observed native Americans doing the front crawl. Basically the swimming equivalent of knowing how to jog, but not how to run or sprint. ref: https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/how-europe-learnt-swim https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/how-europe-learnt-...
  • ahmedfromtunis 5y ago
    A fascinating read. Thanks!
  • dane-pgp 5y ago
    The linked article doesn't say anything about native Americans, and in terms of substantive data it seems to jump in history from the 4th century prevalence of Roman bathhouses, to 16th century local bans on swimming, filling in the gaps (which account for the entire premise of the article) with speculation about bridges and mermaids. It immediately follows the description of those swimming bans with other 16th century examples of Tudor scholars endorsing and writing guides on swimming, resulting in an article that's an interesting read but with a poorly supported thesis.