People have had a consuming interest in going beneath the sea for centuries. Ocean 11 Ancient manuscripts contain depictions of early divers. Earliest Divers Scuba History Ancient artifacts imply that people dove for materials for jewelry such as pearls. Greek literature refers to early sponge divers. The epic of Gilgamesh was one of the most important literary products in Conch-shell lamps and mother-of-pearl inlays in ornamental rosette stones, the Akkadian language. It relates the story of Gilgamesh who was a ruler such as the one shown here are estimated to be 6500 years old. of Uruk, and the best known of all Sumerian heroes, some time during Gilgamesh (the Sumerian hero of the epic the first half of the 3rd millennium B.C. None lived so long nor dared so written in the ancient Akkadian language in mightily as he and his friend Enkidu. Gilgamesh, part divine and part the first half of the 3rd Millennium B.C.) human, was charged with knowing all things on land and sea. needed to find a plant that renewed youthfulness. He dove deep below the In order to curb Gilgamesh's oppressive rule, the god Anu caused the surface to find the plant. creation of Enkidu, a wild man who first lived among the animals but soon was initiated into city-going ways and went to Uruk. While in Uruk, Gilgamesh and Enkidu had a trial of strength, where Gilgamesh was the The first diver ever recorded was Gilgamesh. victor. Found by James Edward Banks in 1912 in ruins of a town of early Mesopotamia. Enkidu later helped Gilgamesh reject a marriage proposal. For that Enkidu found Utnapishtim, who described where to find the plant which renews youth. Gilgamesh dove down to the cave, deep below the surface and found the plant; Only to later, have the plant seized by a serpent. Gilgamesh returned saddened to Uruk. The wife of Utanapishtim the Faraway said to him: "Gilgamesh came here exhausted and worn out. What can you give him so that he can return to his land (with honor) !" Then Gilgamesh raised a punting pole and drew the boat to shore. Utanapishtim spoke to Gilgamesh, saying: "Gilgamesh, you came here exhausted and worn out. What can I give you so you can return to your land? I will disclose to you a thing that is hidden, Gilgamesh, a... I will tell you. There is a plant... like a boxthorn, whose thorns will prick your hand like a rose. If your hands reach that plant you will become a young man again.“ Hearing this, Gilgamesh opened a conduit(!) (to This relief from about 900 B.C. shows Assyrian divers with air tanks of inflated animal skins. the Apsu) and attached heavy stones to his feet. Assyrian Attackers They dragged him down, to the Apsu they pulled Using this method, a diver was soon forced to rebreathe carbon dioxide, which was dangerous. him. He took the plant, though it pricked his hand, and cut the heavy stones from his feet, letting the waves(?) throw him onto its shores. 1 Scyllis (a Greek sailor) caused the Persian king (Xerxes I) great consternation when, breathing through a reed, Scyllis cut the th Book XVI of Iliad proves the existence of divers before the Homer period (about 750 B.C.) mooring lines of the conquering King's battleships in the 5 Century B.C. as told by Herodotus. In the Iliad, Homer describes the use of divers in the Trojan Wars. The sharp rock hit him on the forehead, bashing in "During a naval campaign the Greek Scyllis was taken aboard ship as both his eyebrows, breaking through the skull. His two eyes 740 Greek laws regulating those who dived for sunken treasure are found prisoner by the Persian King Xerxes I. When Scyllis learned that dropped onto the ground, in the dust right at his feet. as early as the third century B.C. Xerxes was to attack a Greek flotilla, he seized a knife and jumped Like a diver, Cebriones toppled over, overboard. The Persians could not find him in the water and out of the well-made chariot. His spirit left his bones. Before the introduction of modern apparatus, divers submerged with presumed he had drowned. Scyllis surfaced at night and made his Then, horseman Patroclus, you made fun of him: the aid of a rope and a stone weight; using the rope as a guide for way among all the ships in Xerxes's fleet, cutting each ship loose position, the naked diver quickly scooped up whatever commodity from its moorings; he used a hollow reed as snorkel to remain "Well now, was being sought. unobserved. Then he swam nine miles (15 kilometers) to rejoin the there's an agile man! What a graceful diver! Greeks off Cape Artemisium." If he were on the fish-filled seas somewhere, he'd feed many men by catching oysters, 870 Scyllis' reed technique, although creative, was limited to about 2 feet jumping overboard in the roughest water, due to the water pressure exerted on the reed. to judge from that easy dive he's just made from his chariot onto the plain. I suppose From the reed, people experimented with air-filled bags. Trojans must have acrobats as well." It is purported that Alexander the Great in 325 B.C. sat in a submersible vessel or something and looked at the underwater world. Alexander the Great used a diving bell (called the It is more likely that this belief is based on a legend, invented or Colimpha) in 330 B.C. to repeated by Ethicus in the 4th century A.D. and expanded in length in penetrate the unseen, the Roman d'Alexander, a French vernacular poem of the 12th century. unknown, underwater world. Aristotle (384-322 BC) mentioned that “…one can allow divers to breathe by lowering a bronze tank into the water. Naturally, After getting into a "glass barrel" and letting himself be "swallowed" by This was described by the container is not filled with water but air, which constantly the sea, this medieval Alexander returns to the surface, appalled, to Aristotle in his Problemata of assists the submerged man”. exclaim "Sir Barons, I have just seen that this whole world is lost and 332 B.C. the great fish mercilessly devour the lesser." This might have been a This device represented a jar, turned upside down, in which lesson in economics, but never the less it deals with the under sea the diver thrust his head. During his descent to the sea floor, world. he breathed the air that remained inside the jar. OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); "Seas, Maps and Men" In the first century BC the Roman architect Vitruvius related a story of how Archimedes uncovered a fraud in the manufacture of a golden crown commissioned by Hiero II, the King of Syracuse. The crown (corona in Latin) would have been in the form of a wreath, such as the one pictured from grave sites in Macedonia and the Dardanelles. The solution which occurred when he stepped into his bath and caused it to Hiero would have placed such a wreath on the statue of a god or overflow was to put a weight of gold equal to the crown, and known to be goddess. pure, into a bowl which was filled with water to the brim. Then the gold would be removed and the king's crown put in, in its place. An alloy of lighter Suspecting that the goldsmith might have replaced some of the gold silver would increase the bulk of the crown and cause the bowl to overflow. given to him by an equal weight of silver, Hiero asked Archimedes to determine whether the wreath was pure gold. And because the wreath was a holy object dedicated to the gods, he could not disturb Although theoretically sound, this method has been criticized for several the wreath in any way. reasons. First, in spite of Vitruvius' s description of it as "the result of a boundless ingenuity", the method requires much less imagination than Archimedes of Syracuse Archimedes exhibits in his extant writings. Second, it does not make use of (circa 287 - 212 B.C.) Excerpt from Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture Archimedes' Law of Buoyancy nor his Law of the Lever. Third, and most important, it would be difficult to implement Vitruvius's method with the degree of measurement accuracy available to Archimedes. 2 Much of the Greek mythology is based on diving. Neptune is the Roman God of the Sea. By the way, the Romans called divers - urinatos. Poseidon is the brother of He carried a trident, which had three Zeus and Hades and Ruler of prongs. He rode a dolphin or a horse. When people go into the water, especially cold water, they have to urinate the Seas. When the sea is rough enough to show quite a bit. white tops to the waves, these are called He's famous for causing storms sea horses. to wreck humans' ships. Oltos, ca 520 BC 1535 - Guglielmo de Loreno developed what is considered to be a true diving bell. In the 16th century, people began to use diving bells supplied with air from the surface, probably the first effective means of staying under water for any length of time. The bell was held stationary a few feet from the surface; its bottom open to water and its top portion Diving in the Middle Ages containing air compressed by the water pressure. A diver standing upright would have his head in the air.