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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.

  Associazione Stefano Cocchi - Casella Postale 424 - 59100 Prato - info@associazionestefanococchi.it