Estimating Athletes’ Centre of Mass as Presented on Ancient Greek Pottery Depictions

Abstract

Combat sports pose a discrete thesis in terms of biomechanics among the majority of the sport activities. This research aims to identify and study the position of Centre of Mass (CoM) in ancient Greek Athletes who participated in combat sports, especially in Pankration. This project was carried out by analyzing figures drawn on ancient pottery. The study calculated the CoM using innovative software and programming: OpenPose, Sublime text, Python programming language, and Matplotlib library. According to the results, the study succeeded (for the first time globally) in calculating the CoM of ancient Pankratiasts during the contests.