As the 2018 Winter Olympics unfold, here's a look back at the history of athletic games, starting with the first recorded sport in history: spear-throwing. | The Atlantic

Around 20,000 BP, Homo sapiens perfected an elegant fix for the limits of human muscle: the spear‑thrower, or atlatl. A simple grooved stick about 60 cm long, it cradled a light, fletched dart nearly three meters in length. When hunters snapped their wrists, the atlatl acted like a spring lever, storing kinetic energy and releasing it in a whip‑crack that could push the dart past 150 kph. Ethnographic tests with modern replicas reveal penetration equal to a .45‑caliber pistol at short range. Tha