<P> The Olympic games were held to be one of the two central rituals in ancient Greece, the other being the much older religious festival, the Eleusinian Mysteries . </P> <P> The games started in Olympia, Greece, in a sanctuary site for the Greek deities near the towns of Elis and Pisa (both in Elis on the peninsula of Peloponnesos). The first games began as an annual foot race of young women in competition for the position of the priestess for the goddess, Hera, and a second race was instituted for a consort for the priestess who would participate in the religious traditions at the temple . </P> <P> The Heraean Games, the first recorded competition for women in the Olympic Stadium, were held as early as the sixth century BC . It originally consisted of foot races only, as did the competition for males . Some texts, including Pausanias's Description of Greece, c . AD 175, state that Hippodameia gathered a group known as the "Sixteen Women" and made them administrators of the Heraea Games, out of gratitude for her marriage to Pelops . Other texts related to the Elis and Pisa conflict indicate that the "Sixteen Women" were peacemakers from Pisa and Elis and, because of their political competence, became administrators of the Heraea . Being the consort of Hera in Classical Greek mythology, Zeus was the father of the deities in the pantheon of that era . The Sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia housed a 13 - metre - high (43 ft) statue in ivory and gold of Zeus that had been sculpted by Phidias circa 445 BC . This statue was one of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World . By the time of the Classical Greek culture, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, the games were restricted to male participants . </P> <P> The historian Ephorus, who lived in the fourth century BC, is one potential candidate for establishing the use of Olympiads to count years, although credit for codifying this particular epoch usually falls to Hippias of Elis, to Eratosthenes, or even to Timaeus, whom Eratosthenes may have imitated . The Olympic Games were held at four - year intervals, and later, the ancient historians' method of counting the years even referred to these games, using the term Olympiad for the period between two games . Previously, the local dating systems of the Greek states were used (they continued to be used by everyone except the historians), which led to confusion when trying to determine dates . For example, Diodorus states that there was a solar eclipse in the third year of the 113th Olympiad, which must be the eclipse of 316 BC . This gives a date of (mid-summer) 765 BC for the first year of the first Olympiad . Nevertheless, there is disagreement among scholars as to when the games began . </P>

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