Chapter one. Ancient history of bodybuilding.

Taormina (Italy). This picture (200 b. C.) represents a woman (on the left), training herself with weights. The use of weights was known in the past as a mean to concieve healt and beauty. Also the chinese used weights from 3500-3600 b. C., when Yu Kang Chi, emperator of China, obligated his suddits to train themselves every day with dumbbells. ¹

It is out of question that in the antiquity, strength played a central role. In spite of the invention of some weapons, the most important of these was, for millenniums and millenniums, the man's force.
We don't know exactly when a man (or more men) noticed that, weighting lifts, he could be stronger. But looking at some pictures and exhibits of the ancient Greeks, we could notice something similar to modern dumbbells.
But there's no need to see these pictures, since everyone knows that the greek statues represent often muscular bodies, and that's the evidence of an ideal of beauty, proportions and aesthetics followed in that period.

That's the difference between bodybuilding and pure weightlifting. The latter considers weights as a mean to conceive a bigger musculature and an armonic body; the last considers weights as a goal. I think that also primitive men were in the habit to lift massive stones to demonstrate their force, but there was no other intention related to this activity.
The ancient Greeks, however, used regular exercise to maintain the body in perfect conditions and they invented also some primitive dumbbells. The culture of body, professed in that period, was an exception, because it was extended to all the population, while later this idea was followed only by some classes of people.

Also Romans were in the habit to practice exercise, but they were too lazy. Only gladiators and praetorians used weightlifting. As Eugen Sandow says: " To their laxity in the matter of Physical Cuture in later years, may, in a great misure, be attributed the main causes of the downfall of the Roman Empire. " ²

Notes

1 David Webster, from the site "Diosas, Guerreras y Amazonas" at the address amaz.freeyellow.com/Index.html

2 Eugene Sandow, "Body-building, or man in the making."

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