Wrestling and grappling sports have a long and complicated history, stretching into prehistoric times. Many traditional forms survive, grouped under the term folk wrestling. More formal systems have been codified in various forms of martial arts worldwide, where grappling techniques form a significant subset of unarmed fighting (complemented by striking techniques).

The modern history of wrestling begins with a rise of popularity in the 19th century, which led to the development of the modern sports of Greco-Roman wrestling on the European continent and of freestyle wrestling and collegiate wrestling in Great Britain and the United States, respectively. These sports enjoyed enormous popularity at the turning of the 20th century. In the 1920s, professional wrestling once a competitive sport became a spectacle after promoters took control of the industry divorcing it from competitive sport wrestling, now known as amateur wrestling.

Antiquity

Wrestling is the oldest combat sport. While its foundational origins lie in global prehistory, many different forms of wrestling developed independently in different cultures at various periods in human history. It also played a role as a type of mock combat and display behaviour among males, which has anthropological roots, and is also seen in non-human Great Apes. Its documented history however necessarily begins with the history of pictorial representations. The oldest representations of wrestling date back 15,000–20,000 years ago, found in southern France. Cave paintings in the Bayankhongor Province of Mongolia dating back to Neolithic age of 7000 BC show grappling of two naked men and surrounded by crowds.Wrestling, archery and horse racing contests in Genghis Khan's ancient capital, Karakorum. Julie Skurdenis, Special to The Chronicle. Sunday, March 27, 2005. In the Ancient Mesopotamia, forms of belt wrestling were popular from earliest times.Encyclopædia Britannica,1981,, p.1025. Images of wrestling, have been found on cylinder seals and a copper statuette, dated 3000 BC. A carving on a stone slabe showing three pairs of wrestlers was dated to around 3000 BC. A cast Bronze figurine, (perhaps the base of a vase) has been found at Khafaji in Iraq that shows two figures in a wrestling hold that dates to around 2600 BC. The statue is one of the earliest depictions of sport and is housed in the National Museum of Iraq.

Portrayal of martial arts sporting in Egypt has begun by the time of the 5th Dynasty mastaba tombs at Saqqara, circa 2400 BC. After a boat joust scene recorded in the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, who were manicurists to King Nyuserre, six pairs of boys wrestle in the nearby tomb of Akhethotep and Ptahhotep. Another early piece of evidence for wrestling in Egypt appears at 11th and 12th Dynasty Beni Hasan (2000 BC, images at right and above), where wrestling scenes in several tombs are elaborated to cover much of a wall. During the period of the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC), additional Egyptian artwork (often on friezes), depicted Egyptian and Nubian wrestlers competing. Carroll notes striking similarities between these ancient depictions and those of the modern Nuba wrestlers. On the 406 wrestling pairs found in the Middle Kingdom tombs at Beni Hasan in the Nile valley, nearly all of the techniques seen in modern freestyle wrestling could be found.

Textual description of wrestling begins with the ancient classics, especially the Greek and Sanskrit epics. The Mahabharata describes the encounter between the accomplished wrestlers Bhima and Jarasandha.

Shuai Jiao is a legendary wrestling style of Chinese antiquity used by the Yellow Emperor during his fight against the rebel Chi You at the Battle of Zhoulu. This early style of combat was first called jiao di (butting with horns). See also

Greek wrestling was a popular form of martial art in which points were awarded for touching a competitor's back to the ground, forcing a competitor out of bounds (arena). Three falls determined the winner. It was at least featured as a sport since the eighteenth Olympiad in 704 BC. Wrestling is described in the earliest celebrated works of Greek literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Wrestlers were also depicted in action on many vases, sculptures, and coins, as well as in other literature. Other cultures featured wrestling at royal or religious celebrations, but the ancient Greeks structured their style of wrestling as part of a tournament where a single winner emerged from a pool of competitors. Late Greek tradition also stated that Plato was known for wrestling in the Isthmian games.

This continued into the Hellenistic period. Ptolemy II and Ptolemy III of Egypt were both depicted in art as victorious wrestlers. After the Roman conquest of the Greeks, Greek wrestling was adopted by the Roman culture and became Roman Wrestling during the period of the Roman Empire (510 BC to AD 500). By the eighth century, the Byzantine emperor Basil I, according to court historians, won in wrestling against a boastful wrestler from Bulgaria.

Celtic wrestling has an extensive history, with wrestling being mentioned in the Tailteann Games dating back from somewhere between 1839 BC to 632 BC (academics disagree) to the 12th century AD when the Normans invaded. Various styles such as Cornish wrestling, Gouren, Collar-and-elbow wrestling, etc. are likely to have evolved from some common style.

Medieval and Early Modern Europe

There is ample evidence of wrestling practiced throughout medieval Europe, both by the nobility and the lower classes. Wrestling remained popular during the Renaissance, and for much of the 16th century. In 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold pageant, Francis I of France threw Henry VIII of England in a wrestling shoes match (possibly with a Flying MareTripp, Michael: PERSISTENCE OF DIFFERENCE: A HISTORY OF CORNISH WRESTLING, University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009, Vol I p2-217.), after his Cornish wrestlers had soundly defeated Francis' Breton wrestlers.Morris, Charles: Historical Tales, the Romance of Reality, JB Lippincott Company (Philadelphia) 1895, p212.Sewell, Elizabeth Missing: Popular History of France, Longmans Green and Co (London) 1876, p302. In Henry VIII's kingdom, wrestling in many places was widely popular and had a long history.

The German tradition has records of a number of master-Ringer of the 15th to 16th centuries specializing in unarmed combat. Unarmed combat was divided in two categories, sportive grappling or geselliges ringen and serious unarmed combat or kampfringen (where kampf is the Early Modern German term for "duel"). While sportive grappling had fixed rules that prohibited dangerous techniques, usually starting in grappling hold and ending with a throw or submission, kampfringen can be considered a system of unarmed self-defense including punches, joint-locks, elbow strikes, chokeholds, headbutts and (to a limited extent) kicks.

One of the primary men to have shaped kampfringen at the dawning of the German Renaissance appears to have been Austrian master Ott Jud. He is said to have developed a system of grappling to be used in combat, including joint breaks, arm locks and throws designed to cause serious injury. No treatise from Ott's own hand has survived, but his system is taught by several fencing masters of the later 15th century. Paulus Kal counts him among the "society of Liechtenauer", saying that he was wrestling teacher to the "lords of Austria".Maister ott jud der der hern von osterrich ringer gewessen yst (k. k. Ambraser-Sammlung, ca. 1470) (possibly under Frederick III).Welle 1993, p. 259 Other treatises that contain material both on ringen and on swordsmanship include those of Fiore dei Liberi (c. 1410), Fabian von Auerswald (1462), Pietro Monte (c. 1480), and Hans Wurm (c. 1500).

It was only with the beginning Early Modern period, specifically the more "dignified" code of behaviour the upper classes imposed on themselves in the Baroque period that wrestling was abandoned by European nobility, and it became a pastime of rural populations, developing into the various surviving forms of European folk wrestling. A late treatise on ringen is that by Johann Georg Passchen, published in 1659.Vollständiges Ring-Buch / darinnen angewiesen wird / wie man Adversarium recht sol angreiffen / sich lossmachen / die schläge pariren / unterschiedliche Lectiones und die contra-Lectiones darauff machen / mit Fleiß beschrieben und mit vielen nothwendigen kupffern außgebildet. 1659, reprint 1663 Halle (S.), Melchior Oelschlägel; English translation by Eli Steenput , Journal of Western Martial Art, November 2000 Maybe the last book which deals with Ringen as a deadly martial art, is possibly "Leib-beschirmende und Feinden Trotz-bietende Fecht-Kunst" from Johann Andreas Schmidt, which was published in Weigel, Nürnberg in 1713.

In the Middle East

Many of the world's oldest depictions of wrestling can be found in the Middle East. Carvings and statues show that forms of belt wrestling existed in the region since ancient times, in addition to matches between humans and animals. Wrestling is also mentioned in the epics of Gilgamesh and the Shahnameh. Oil wrestling as practiced in present-day Turkey and Central Asia is recorded in ancient Sumeria and Babylon. In Persia, Pahlavani traditional grappling or koshti (کشتی) was practiced by both the upper and lower classes both for sport and as training for battle. In training halls known as zourkhaneh, soldiers practiced resistance exercises and grappling in a tradition now called Varzesh-e bastani (ورزش باستانی; lit. "ancient athletics"). Ancient Iranian combat-wrestling (koshti-ye jangi) included not only grabs but also punches and low kicks. As Iranian influence spread with the Achaemenid Empire and later the Persian Empire, the practice was adopted in the Indian subcontinent as Pehlwani.

In Asia

China

In Ancient China, there were stories describing Chi You, the progenitor of jiao di(角抵), using punches and elbow strikes to the head and kicks to his opponents in wrestling tournaments. Classical Chinese wrestling or jiao li (角力) was a public sport in the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) held for court amusement as well as for recruiting the best fighters. Competitors wrestled each other on a raised platform called a lei tai, and both competitors would have to either push their opponent off the platform, or submit them with various arm-locks(chin-na) to emerge as the winner. Traditionally, belts were also worn by wrestlers to have additional gripping. The term shuai jiao was chosen by the Central Guoshu Academy of Nanjing in 1928 when competition rules began to be standardized.

Indian subcontinent

Wrestling in the Indian subcontinent was differentiated into four types that progressed from sport (malakride) to combat (malla-yuddha) mentioned in Mahabharat 3050 BC. Mughal conquerors introduced more groundwork and referred to their grappling style as kusti. Competitors still wrestle as in ancient times, on dirt floors while wearing only kowpeenam or loincloth. Wresting was also described in Ramayana, which predates Mahabarata. The examples of the biggest wrestlers from Ramayana are Hanuman, Bali, Raavan (who was defeated by Bali), Sugreev and Angad. Hanuman is considered as an inspiration even in the current times as the biggest wrestler of all time and is also worshipped by the Indian wrestlers.

Japan

The term jūjutsu was coined in the 17th century, after which time it became a blanket term for a wide variety of grappling-related disciplines in Japanese martial arts. Prior to that time, these skills had names such as , , , , , , and even the (as early as 1724, almost two centuries before Kanō Jigorō founded the modern art of Kodokan Judo). The systems of unarmed combat that were developed and practiced during the Muromachi period (before 1573) are today referred to collectively as .

Modern history