Diving is one of the oldest aquatic practices, its history goes back to time immemorial. Being able to teleport us to prehistoric years, the archaeological remains of different cultures such as the Asian and Mediterranean mark a clear origin of this practice.
Millennial signs of immersion
Back in the year 4500 BC. Diving took place on the coasts of the Mediterranean and Asia, with the final purpose of making jewelry with pearls, corals, shells and mother-of-pearl. There is a representation of an underwater harvesting scene. made with mother-of-pearl inlays on the walls of the ancient city of Bismaya, or texts from 2250 BC. from C. that talk about the use of pearls as payment of tribute to a Chinese emperor.
These remains and the literary references of different Greek classics such as Aristotle, Herodotus or Plutarch, place these first immersions between the year 5000 and 4500 BC. of C.
Marine products, a new market at the time
To obtain such materials, the divers jumped into the sea holding their breath and descending while holding on to large stones that they abandoned in order to ascend, the objective was to collect various objects to market them later. A clear example of this dates back to 3200 BC where in Thebes (Egypt), large quantities of mother-of-pearl shells were used by artisans.
The island of Crete, and specifically the towns of Kuphonisis and Palaikastra, were important commercial centers for the products that divers extracted from the sea, such as snail (murex trunculus) and other species that were used to dye the shells with their purple pulp. clothes of the kings of antiquity.
The first illustration of a dive
It dates back to the year 880 BC. C. and consists of a wooden bas-relief (currently in the British Museum in London), found in the palace of the Persian king Assurbanibal II, which shows the submerged monarch crossing a river, breathing with the help of a wineskin (a container made of the skin of a sheep and filled with air), at the head of a group of soldiers. Some Interpretations of this illustration show that the wineskin could have been used as a float and not as a source of air.
Another bas-relief was also found showing a scene where a group of Phoenicians flee across the Tigris River, cradle of Mediterranean civilizations, from Assyrian archers with the same diving technique.
Leonado da Vinci an ideology of the time
Although the medieval era was not really important in terms of the evolution of diving. But nevertheless, Leonardo da Vinci, configured one of the first models of basic diving equipment. The suit used the physionomy of a diving bell from which two tubes connected to the outside came out, and together with this it composed a kind of fins in the shape of frog legs.
