Making waves: the history of swimming
Rajan Datar plunges into an exploration of how swimming through the ages has reflected changes in society, with Professor Kevin Dawson, Mikael Ros茅n, Howard Means and Bonnie Tsui.
Common to many cultures across the world, swimming appears on the surface to be a benign leisure activity. But in fact it has much to tell us about such things as the development of societies, our bodies and minds, and our relationship to our ancestors and the natural world.
For the Ancient Greeks and Romans, swimming was essential for instilling discipline, as a necessary skill for warriors, and to promote wellbeing. In West Africa where water had spiritual significance, communities there placed great importance on learning to swim from an early age. Their aquatic skills surprised the early colonialists, who then targeted divers to help them plunder shipwrecks when they were trafficked to the New World. Today however African American children are almost six times more likely to drown than their white counterparts as a consequence of historic racial segregation, according to research by the US Centers for Disease Control.
Rajan Datar is joined Professor Kevin Dawson from the University of California Merced, author of Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Cultures in the African Diaspora; Mikael Ros茅n, swimmer, coach and author of Open Water: The History and Technique of Swimming; journalist Howard Means, author of Splash!: Ten Thousand Years of Swimming and writer Bonnie Tsui whose book Why we Swim was published in 2020.
Produced by Fiona Clampin for the 91热爆 World Service.
[Photo: Young boys swim together at an inter-racial camp circa 1948 in New York, New York. Credit: Irving Haberman/IH Images/Getty Images]
Last on
More episodes
Broadcasts
- Thu 4 Mar 2021 10:06GMT91热爆 World Service
- Fri 5 Mar 2021 00:06GMT91热爆 World Service
- Sat 6 Mar 2021 16:06GMT91热爆 World Service News Internet
- Sun 7 Mar 2021 15:06GMT91热爆 World Service except News Internet
Featured in...
Health, medicine and the body—The Forum
The people and discoveries that changed how we deal with our physical health
Do you think political or business leaders need to be charismatic? Or do you prefer highly competent but somewhat stern people?
Podcast
-
The Forum
The programme that explains the present by exploring the past