The Lost Lake of Ancient Olympia: How a Waterway Impacted Greece’s Olympic Games

The archaeological tract of Olympia shows the stadium, the temple of Hera, and the temple of Zeus. Credit: Panosgti34 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

A long-vanished water erstwhile shaped the scenery of ancient Olympia (Greek: Ολυμπία), the birthplace of the Olympic Games and 1 of Greece’s astir ineffable sanctuaries. Researchers present accidental this mislaid water was cardinal to the city’s regular beingness and rituals, providing water, abstraction for livestock, and perchance adjacent a mounting for spiritual acts.

The study, led by Lena Slabon and published successful Quaternary Environments and Humans, shows that Olympia was not lone framed by the rivers Alpheios and Kladeos but besides bordered by a immense water system.

Sediment cores uncover that the water stretched crossed the Makrisia and Ladiko basins and existed from the 8th millennium BC until astatine slightest the 6th period AD — overlapping with the centuries erstwhile the Olympic Games flourished.

A sanctuary connected the water’s edge

Olympia was much than a sporting venue. It was a sanctuary to Zeus, filled with temples, altars, and monuments. Each summer, pilgrims arrived from crossed the Greek satellite to grant the gods and compete.

Water was indispensable to prolong the athletes, provender the crowds, and behaviour sacrifices. Researchers judge the water helped conscionable these needs.

Wells excavated wrong the sanctuary align with the reconstructed shoreline, suggesting they were fed by lake-controlled groundwater. That means the h2o proviso for the Olympic Games, agelong thought to travel chiefly from rivers, was tied intimately to the lake.

Maximum grade of the Lake of Olympia based connected sedimentary grounds and integer terrain data. Credit: Lena Slabon et al. / CC BY 4.0

The water whitethorn person served different purposes. Its shallow edges apt supported grazing herds, which supplied nutrient during the games. It whitethorn besides person been utilized for fishing, washing, oregon ritual purification tied to Greek spiritual practices.

Ancient sources enactment silent

Curiously, past authors ne'er notation a lake. Xenophon, Pindar, and Pausanias wrote successful item astir Olympia’s rivers and fertile land. They described meadows, hunting grounds, and monuments, but not a assemblage of h2o adjacent the sanctuary.

This soundlessness has puzzled scholars. Was the water excessively shallow oregon seasonal to merit description? Did visitors simply place it successful favour of temples and competitions? Or does the lack bespeak the mode past writers chose to contiguous Olympia’s ineffable geography?

More than athletics and worship

The study suggests the mislaid water of ancient Olympia was arsenic overmuch a portion of the games arsenic the stadium oregon temple. During the tallness of the Panhellenic Games, researchers accidental the water experienced beardown eutrophication, apt from the beingness of monolithic crowds, livestock, and wastewater.

The water was portion of Olympia’s communicative arsenic overmuch arsenic the temples and competitions. Slabon explained that it connected people, animals, and rituals.

A thread/photographic effort of humans among Classical ruins wherever Time, maestro of men, reigns supreme.

A Peloponnesian shepherd sits among the past ruins of the athletes' entranceway to the Olympic stadium successful Olympia, Greece c.1907 pic.twitter.com/mKKVuVCAna

— Michel Lara (@VeraCausa9) November 29, 2019

The water whitethorn besides person served arsenic a transport route, allowing goods and gathering materials to scope the sanctuary much easily. Some shallow areas whitethorn person provided paths to transverse the vale connected foot.

A puzzle that remains

The Temple of goddess Hera successful Olympia, Elis. Credit: Ingo Mehling Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

For now, the water adds a missing furniture to Olympia’s history. It explains however the sanctuary could prolong thousands of visitors, yet it besides raises questions astir wherefore past texts ignored specified a striking feature.

What is wide is that Olympia was not lone shaped by myth, stone, and sport. It was shaped by h2o — a water that erstwhile sustained its games, rituals, and people, earlier disappearing from some the onshore and memory.