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Swimming Underwater - Apnea
- The History
It is around to the 2000 a.C., when the first light of the civilization
of Creta was expanded in the Mediterranean, that it is born the legend
of Glauco, the exceptional sponge fisherman that divided its life
breathing in surface and equally in extended apneas why nourished
of a particular seaweed magical therefore from being able to catch
up depth fable and play with the fish. But Glauco is also perhaps
the first case, cited even if only in legend, of death for "anossica
syncope".
The fable tells in fact that one day, at the end of an exceptional
immersion, the God of the sea did not want to give back him to the
surface but received him to its court, between the sirene, and the
body of Glauco cosparse of alghe. The Greek and Roman history is very
rich of episodes that are establish to an underwater activity.
But over the mythology and the legend the history of the Mediterranean
is studded of episodes that put in prominence "the underwater
man". Therefore Erodoto remembers that in the 480 a.C., in a
dark night, the fisherman Scyllias and its daughter Cyana, swimming
underwater, cut cables of mooring of the Persian fleet provoking to
the ships of Serse an average catastrophe that made useless the proposals.
Fins and mask are the indispensable instruments of the sub today,
their history is more recent but not less fascinating and make us
understand how strong was the desire of the man to more better know,
seeing it, this fascinating submarine bottom and how equally the necessity
to mainly dominating has stimulated the talent and the inventive abilities
to this same man.
In the notes of Leonardo da Vinci there are just sketches of divers
to free body who leave with the fins around the 1300, an arabic traveller,
after a visit to a pearl fish market on the Persian Gulf, filler that
the divers before dipping applied to the face one species of mask
of polished turtle and to the nose a clasp of the same matter.
It was in 1920 that a French man, named Decorlieu, devised a prototype
of fins that, with successive modifications, were put in commerce
in 1935 and from these modern ones in their numerous varying (short,
long, floatings, monofin etc.) come down.
However we do not believe that the merit must be attributed to a precise
name to have created something that helped the propulsive thrust of
the man in the water and underwater; to testimony of all this, an
american traveller, Owen Churcill, filler that in 1938 observed in
Tahiti some fishermen who carried to the feet fins that increased
remarkablly the speed.
The relief incuriosì him and the successive informations allowed
him to already ascertain that the first men to use them had been,
very many years before, the inhabitants of the islands Marquises and
that they were constructed of rebellions of palm and leaves of pandano
interlaced.
We are therefore arrives to the days today, to this ulterior experience
that perhaps seems us new and that in truth the curiosity of the man
is ancient how much is ancient, its innato need to discover and to
dominate the atmosphere.
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