• 11/03/2023
• By wizewebsite
• 360 Views

Nostalgic memories: How did our ancestors ski? We probably wouldn't want to go back, but the old photos will caress the soul<

Do you also like to ski? And maybe you also love the movie Krakonoš and the skiers, where the teacher is the first in the village - as it should be - to learn to ski. However, even before the teacher, a smuggler, transporting goods from Poland, had mastered this art. The local gendarmes also try to try the novelty, but to no avail... What period was it? The film was quite realistically set at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the first skis really began to appear in our country. However, it was really a long time after people in other parts of the world moved on similar "devil's boards" or simply "woods", as the teacher called them in the film. It was certainly not a very sophisticated sports equipment, but it certainly served its purpose.

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Ancestors on skis

Where were the really oldest traces of skiers that were found? Archaeologists discovered them in Russia and date the find to approximately 6300 - 5000 years BC. The skis found on the territory of today's Sweden are only slightly younger, they could have been created around 5200 years before the birth of Christ, and Norwegian scientists place them in the period between 3200 - 3000 BC. So it is clear that people were racing each other on skis much earlier than we could even imagine. It was certainly not long and relatively thin skis, as we know them today, but rather a kind of snowshoes, they were able to get from place to place even in deep snow.

Each ski is different, one with fur

It is interesting that in the ancient beginnings of wooden skis, at least remotely similar to those that our great-grandparents may remember from their childhood, in many cases it was a pair of unevenly long "planks" ”, where one ski was used for rebounds and the other for sliding. The reflective one was equipped with fur for better resistance, the other one was smooth to glide over the snow as best as possible. So it was a kind of cross-country skis, and riding them was almost unlike anything we imagine under the term skiing today.

Combat skis

Just as in other areas of life, the military tastes of the rulers of the time also brought development to skiing, so military explorers on skis appeared in Norway as early as 1200. In our regions, however, we had practically no idea about skis for a good seven hundred years. On the other hand, in the second half of the nineteenth century, skiing in our territory began to spread relatively quickly, and it was the Czechs who were the first in the world (with the exception of the Nordic countries) to establish a ski association, headed by Jan Buchat from Dolní Štěpany in 1903.

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Sweatpants, a sweater and hooray for the hill!

And then came the time that we can admire in the photos. Skis slowly started to become more accessible and skiers on the hills increased. However, while we go out on the slopes in clothes made of the most modern materials, in jackets that don't blow away, and we also have special underwear, back then sports were done in sweatpants and sweaters. Would we like to go on the slopes equipped like this? So, of course, without thinking about any cable car that would take skiers up the hill...

Source: en.wikipedia, britanica.com

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