Cave wall painting on the Isle of Crete depict men facing each other in a boxing stance so boxing is Greek in origin? As far as i know it seems to have originated in ancient Greece and the Romans learned it from them. Of course they didn't have Queensbury rules back then. So would i be correct to list Greece as the country of origin for boxing?
No. I'm sure the Babylonians/Mesopotamians, Egyptians were engaging in fisticuffs long before the Greeks existed.
Im sure they were too, but you know there is a big difference between boxers and untrained street brawlers.
What do you classify as "boxing"? Modern rules, a ring and gloves? If yes. Then you have answered your original question already. Based on a picture or hieroglyphics of people in a "boxing stance". You have gathered that the Greeks invented boxing?
Boxing as in knowledge of footwork, jabbing, proper way to throw punches such as hooks, uppercuts, crosses and straight punches. Head movement, feinting, etc. Did they do that in ancient Greece and Rome? I don't know for sure. Modern boxing rules were introduced by the Marquis of Queensbury. Given the available infromation it appears Greece is the country of origin for boxing just as Okinawa is the birth place of Karate and China of the Kung Fu styles.
For as long as there have been men, there has been fighting, and for as long as there has been fighting, there have been men who have found ways to be better at it. You haven't defined boxing (or karate or kung fu). What specific attributes does a fighting system need to have to be called boxing and how do you know that what the Greeks are doing meets those requirements - we have no footage of what the Greeks were doing.
All you've seen is pictures of men in a stance. You have no idea if they used modern techniques of boxing, modern training methods or a modern ruleset. You also have no idea if that's how they actually fought, or that's simply a method of depiction that the artist in question wanted to use.
Didn't i already answer that? I said i don't really know if the Greeks were using modern boxing technique or not.
...you also said that the information tells you that the Greeks invented boxing. Those two statements are kinda sorta almost totally contradictory.
I would say boxing probably existed in the first civilization. It's the simplest way for two people to beat each other up in a semi civilized manner.
As far as I am aware there are carvings of boxing before crowds in ancient Egypt, and possibly in Summeria.
Given that they weren't even using modern boxing techniques as you know them in the 19th century what do you think the chances of the Greeks doing then were?
Probably not the best information in the world, but it's sure as heck a lot better then viewing some pictures found in Crete and drawing some pretty big conclusions from it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing
Damn I forgot the name of the article, but there was a recent publication in Nature (I think) demonstrating that some of the structures in our fists actually evolved in the way that they did because the made better weapons. If that's the case, then "boxing" predates our species; which to be honest isn't really all the surprising IMO. I'll do some digging around for that article later to validate that I was talking out of my buttocks.
