History of Freediving
from the remains of shell discovered close to their settlements, evidence that they had acquired the knowledge and adequate practical technique of immersion to gather shellfish from the bottom of the sea!…
At the Mediterranean sea the practice of freediving was part of the daily life of the population and evidenced of these are the numerous myths and legends of those that came before us.
Basic motive was the discovering of food and use on military actions.
Freedivers can be found in different civilizations in different chronic periods. The Minoan civilizatrion 2000 and 1570 and the mythologigal figure Glaucus known as “the green mariner” has being the pre-alphabet apneist.
Athenian historian Tucidide wrtote that in 415 BC,during the siege fo Syracuse, Athenian divers sawed through the sharpened underwater strakes that were preventing Athenian boats from enetering the harbour.
The philosopher Aristotle recounts a similar story of the sub-aquatic Grecians who destroyed the barricades of the port of Tyrem, and explains that in order to stay longer underwater these ancestors of modern scuba diver used a lebeta, probably a type of mouthpiece connected to a sealed bottle.
Cleopatra the last queen of Egypt (69-30 BC), used divers to arrange a dreadful joke to her lover Marco Antonio. And precise orders of the empress divers affixed a petrified fish to Marco Antonio’s hook.
Exceptional, even today, are the practises of the Japanese and Korean AMA
who earned their living from more than 2000 years by collecting crustaceans and molluscs.
Haggi Statti a Grecian sponge fisherman at age of 35 in the year 1913 at the island of Karpathos
he recoverd the lost anchor or the Regina’s Margarita, Royal Italian ship,
diving at a depth of -76 meters after an immersion of around three minutes.
In modern age exceptional, talented and great athletes like RaymondBucher, JacqueMayol, RobertCroft, EnzoMaiorca, UmbertoPelizzari, PipinFerreras, GianlucaGenoni, LoicLeferme and others made the athlete of Freediving well known all over the world!