Exercise Through the Ages: From Foraging to Sitting Still
Exercise began as foraging for survival for our hunter/gatherer forbears and is no less essential in our contemporary age of sitting and screen time. Take a quick trip through history.
Exercise has been integral to human life for millennia, evolving over 12 000 years from the early hunter/gatherer societies when survival depended on physical fitness.
Looking out from the 21st century it’s clear we didn’t shift from foraging for subsistence to sitting and screen time over night. Trace the evolution through this short slide show of 10 highlights from the journey.
1. Hunting for Good Health. For primitive nomads living before 10 000 BC, perissten hunting and gathering was required for survival. Extended celebrations followed successful expeditions and typically involved dancing. The subsistence lifestyle was physically demanding and selected for a high level of fitness.
2. Yoga Imitates the Animals. Yoga evolved under Hindu priests in ancient India who hoped that by mimicking the movements they observed in the creatures around them, man might achieve a comparable balance with nature. They also understood yoga's myriad health benefits.
3. The Yin and the Yang. As early as 2600 BCE, the Chinese prescribed breathing exercises, understood as medical gymnastics, for patients with fever, chills, even complete paralysis. Exercise of the extremities combined with massage was also popular. Yin = disease and death. Yang = life and health. Exercise was prescribed for its yang effect.
4. The First Rx for Exercise. A physician in India was the first one recorded to have prescribed exercise, an activity that he believed made the body "stout," supported growth of limbs and muscle, and improved GI function. Susruta (ca 500 BCE) noted that a man should take exercise every day but “only to half extent of his capacity” as otherwise “it may prove fatal.”
5. The Daily Constitutional. Daily exercise to maintain health was first advocated by Pythagoras, the Greek medical philosopher. His thought was that disease was a result of poor harmony within the body and that it could be restored and maintained with a daily regimen of "long walks, running, wrestling, discuss throwing, and boxing."
6. The Oath Includes Fitness. According to Hippocrates, “…food and exercise, while possessing opposite qualities, yet work together to produce health.” The Father of Medicine is believed to have been the first to issue a written prescription for a patient suffering from consumption.
7. Galen Favored Games. For Galen, motion was not considered exercise unless it was vigorous and caused labored breathing but when prescribed for ill health, exercise was to be moderate. He prescribed exercise for patients with ailments from arthritis to vertigo. His favorite exercise: games that used a small ball.
8. The Messenger vs The Cobbler. Comparing and constrasting diseases common to various tradesmen, Italian physician Bernardini Ramazzini noted that runners, including professional messengers, rarely were afflicted by the health disorders seen in sedentary tailors and cobblers.
9. Thoroughly Modern Fitness. Considered the father of modern fitness, Dr Kenneth H Cooper introduced the importance of aerobic exercise and advocated disease prevention. His philosophy: “It is easier to maintain good health through proper exercise, diet and emotional balance than it is to regain it once it is lost.”
