The Origins of Bungee Jumping and Skydiving
These days, extreme sports are everywhere and are gaining in popularity every day. Two extreme sports have very interesting origin stories; bungee jumping and skydiving. These two activities have become very popular among many people all over the world. Not a lot of people know where they come from though, they think they are very new sports and in some regards they are, but they originated from rituals and activities practised many years ago.
Extreme sports have evolved over the years. It used to be that certain sports that have become mainstream these days, such as skiing and mountain climbing, were at one time considered extreme. Over the years as safety equipment started to appear and be made of better quality material and techniques were introduced that made these sports much safer, people stopped considering them extreme and now even kids go skiing. A lot of extreme sports that are extreme today may become mainstream in a few years and people all over the world will be practising them and enjoying them all the time. Many sociologists say that extreme sports are a modern rite of passage ritual that people go through to reach a certain stage in their lives. This is very interesting because the extreme sport of bungee jumping originated from a ritual that was a rite of passage and is still practised today.
Bungee jumping probably originated from the practise of N’gol, also called land diving, that is done in the southern part of the Pentecost Island in Vanuatu Archipelago, in the Pacific Ocean, 2000 km east off the Australia’s Queensland coast. The practise of land diving consists of young men who climb tall structures constructed in their villages and then with two elastic vines tied to their feet jump off and reach the ground just to be pulled up as their hair touches the ground. The practice is meant to be a rite of passage for these young men to show that they have reached adulthood and also it is meant to fertilise the ground for a good season of crops.
Ancient tradition says that the moment a young man’s hair or head touches the ground it will produce good quality crops for that year. Every year the young men of villages take part in the ritual. It is a very dangerous ritual because the structures that the villagers construct out of wood are not that sturdy and also because of the fact that there is not that much elasticity in the vines and a lot of young men are injured in the process of jumping to the ground. This ritual is probably the predecessor of bungee jumping because of the fact that both activities are so similar. Bungee jumping is a lot safer than land diving but it is essentially the same concept. A modern sport has come into being by an ancient ritual practised by indigenous villagers. Maybe in the future bungee jumping will become one of modern people’s rituals that future generations will study and investigate.
Another extreme sport, skydiving, also has a very interesting origin story. Skydiving evolved from the practise of parachuting. In olden days people would jump off of free standing natural structures with parachutes strapped to their backs. This probably gave rise to another extreme sport, BASE jumping. Before they jumped out of aeroplanes people would use hot air balloons and fling themselves out of them with parachutes strapped to their backs. The modern sport of skydiving came from parachuting in times of war. During World War I and II the art of bailing out of an aeroplane was perfected and any time a pilot was in danger of crashing, he would bail out with only a parachute strapped to his back. Over the years as the wars ended, soldiers who returned home would continue the practice because they liked it so much. Slowly it moved from soldiers to normal people who wanted to try the crazy sport and get a feeling of what it is like to jump out of a plane.
One of these extreme sports had its origins in an ancient ritual that is still practised today. The other came from a war time strategy to become a mainstream extreme sport. Many other sports will be developed in the years to come and they will probably have origin stories that are just as interesting as these two.
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