One of my life's goals is to swim in as many lakes, rivers, pools and oceans as possible to use my swimming skills as freely as possible. I like the feeling of being in a large body of water.
The guide told us there were no crocodiles in the water when I swam in it in Mexico. In London, I swam in a busy indoor pool with noisy swimmers and in Australia, I swam in the only women's pool in the country. The same lake that my grandmother swam in before fleeing Germany is where I've been swimming. I've looked up from the sea to the mosque at the beach in Tel Aviv.
I have found myself in waters far away from home. I'm part of an elite because of my swimming ability.
The majority of people can't swim, according to Karen Eva Carr, who opened Shifting Currents. The majority of people must keep their feet on the ground if they want to bathe and wash their clothes in rivers and lakes.
Humans from over 100,000 years ago learned how to swim. Pictures from the earliest cave drawings and folk narratives show a long history of human swimming.
One in four people in low-income countries can't swim, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Girls and women are more likely to not be able to swim in low to middle income countries.
Privatization of beaches and foreshores, as well as the building of dams, roads, ports, and larger cities, has reduced access to natural waterways around the world.
It's difficult to learn to swim as an adult and do-or-die, and it's not possible to fake it.
Carr's world history shows that swimming abilities have changed over time and that most people can not swim. People have migrated, conquered, traded, competed and shared stories that celebrate entering the water or warn of its dangers.
Neanderthals used to swim.
Humans were the first to swim. About 100,000 years ago, Neanderthals lived in Italy. They used the bones from their swimmer's ear to make tools.
When glaciers reached south to England, northern Germany, Poland and northern Russia, swimming was stopped. People didn't swim over the next 100,000 years.
In order to absorb more sunlight, and produce sufficientvitamin D necessary to good health, these populations developed genetically lighter skin The Greeks, Romans, Scythians and Iranians continued to live in places that were warm during the Ice Age even after they migrated south.
There are depictions of people moving in a horizontal posture with their arms outstretched in rock paintings in southern Algeria. It's possible they are swimming.
The Cave of Swimmers is located in western Egypt.
There are depictions of swimming in Egyptian text and imagery. Poor Egyptians did not swim. There were many Egyptian girls and women swimming. Mark Antony was capable of swimming.
Stories about swimming for fun and pleasure along with hunting and foraged are found in many traditional tales. The twins thrown into the river are quickly saved by the swimmers. A funny story tells of a woman who jumps into the river to swim after a bean.
The oldest swimming stroke is overarm. In Egyptian, Hittite, and early Greek and Roman images people are shown swimming, alternating their arms and using a flutter kick with straight legs, the same stroke we teach in Australia. Roman and Greek swimmers don't put their faces in the water and breaststroke isn't shown.
Plato suggests that a man who swims on his back against the current is acting foolish. Swimmers use sidestroke to push canoes or carry something through the water.
The earliest flotation devices created by Assyrians were made from goat skin and used to stay afloat in the fast moving rivers of eastern Syria and north Iraq.
Swimming was associated with different myths about race. People who swam were dehumanized. By the first century BCE, North Chinese writers were making fun of the Southern Chinese for their darker skin color.
Water was sacred, dangerous, sometimes magical, and not to be polluted by human bodies, and it was part of the northern-hemiosphere.
Persians did not urinate or spit into a river, nor did they wash their hands in one, according to Herodotus.
Depending on how well or not the other culture swims, the cultural difference expressed through swimming is present in the historical narratives. It's a way of marking class. Greek and Roman women are known to swim. Agripper the Younger was a great swimmer. She escaped an assassination attempt on her son by swimming across a lake.
Some cultures didn't swim in the old world. The real and imagined creatures of the seas and lakes were feared by people across Europe and northern Asia. The reasons for this non- swimming are explored in Carr's history.
Slavery and sexuality.
It's not only warm weather that determines whether a community will swim or not. Her history is a study of white culture. Swimming is an important part of world history.
sexuality and promiscuity were associated with swimming. Swimming is an erotic way to rape in the Metamorphoses. Alexander the Great and a companion hid behind a rock to watch women swimming naked. The sight of women and girls swimming semi-clothed or naked is linked to shame.
In the history of patriarchy, swimming is closely related to it. Until the 1700s, when wealthier Europeans and European-Americans learned how to swim, trial by water for witches and the ducking of women and girls was practiced in Europe for centuries.
Muslim slave traders associated Central African nudity with promiscuity and likened the ability to swim to animals. In Africa and the Americas, explorers used people's swimming skills as a reason to enslave them.
Slaves were expected to swim in the course of their work. Slaves were lifesavers for white swimmers, swam when tracking escaped slaves, and salvaged lost goods from wrecks. Native American pearl divers were slaves.
Carr believes that swimming has become a sport of the elite because of the economic and educational history of inequity.
Carr's history is well structured, with chapters clearly titled for readers who might want to look into certain topics. It is weak in analyzing contemporary situations. Carr's analysis of the reasons for the 2005 Cronulla Riots did not mention the Howard government's anti-migration stance after 9/11.
The histories of Australia's First Nations and the Pacific Islands are only sketched in. This ambitious work is written for the lay reader with an interest in this rich topic and beautifully illustrated with mono and color images, an index and chronology.
Under a Creative Commons license, this article is re-posted. The original article is worth a read.
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