Nudist Timeline
•
Public nudity was common in ancient
Egypt
under Pharaoh Akhen-Aton (1385-1353 BCE).
•
Students in ancient
Greece
exercised and received instruction while nude; athletes competed in thenude. This continued until 393 CE, when the Christian emperor banned the Olympic Games becausehe considered them Pagan.
•
Ascetics in ancient
India
practiced nudity as part of their quest for simplicity.
•
The
Japanese
widely practiced nude communal bathing until recently. Today, there exists only "
...a few mixed bathing pools in hot spring spas, and some mixed public baths in small villages in thedeep countryside
."
•
Five
Christian groups
from the 2nd to the 15th century practiced public nudity: the Adamites, Adamianis, Carpocrations, Encratites, and Marcosians.
•
Many cultures
in tropical areas wear very little or no clothing, even today.
•
John Adams
enjoyed nude swimming in the Potomac River.
•
Public nude bathing was common on the beaches of the
UK
by the 1840's.
•
During the reign of Queen Victoria, a period of sexual repression began, which spread throughout muchof the English-speaking world. At the height of the Victorian Era, it was common to cover all legs, eventhose of pianos and tables, in order to prevent sexual arousal. Bathing suits at the time covered almostthe entire bodies of both men and women. Then, as now, much of society considered nudity and sexualarousal to be synonymous.
John Adams
Naked Ascetics Doing Yoga Exercises.
circa 1890
Naked People(Nackende Menschen) by Heinrich Pudor, under the pseudonym of Heinrich Scham was probably the first book on nudism to be published. Written in Germany during the 1890s, it predates even RichardUngewitter's
Die Nacktheit
. The English translation was published in 1894, and has seemingly been lost. Now,resurrected by Reason Books,
Naked People'
s renewed availability will place it as an immediate collector's item,appropriate for any serious library.
Naked People
itself is aphoristic and poetic, but its pleading for a naked andopen lifestyle is both continual and undeniable.
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