The Ancient Greek art that most of us know features able-bodied people up-front: athletes with six-pack abs and fit and trim muscular physiques. But these images skew what we know to be the reality for many Ancient Greeks, and recent work by Dr. Debby Sneed aims to show that disabled people were not only commonplace, but in many instances recognized as deserving of accomodations by society.
Dr. Sneed is not the first to point out the ubiquity of Ancient Greeks who suffered from arthritis and broken bones, as the skeletal remains from the archaeological record testify. In less well known (to us) art, there are depictions of people with bent limbs, or people with canes or crutches. You can see examples in the first and second photos.
But Sneed recently reassessed the archaeological remains of Ancient Greek temples and found evidence of ramps built for disabled people. These accomodations were more concentrated in places where there were likely to have been folks who needed such assistance. For instance, at the famous Ancient Greek sanctuary at Epidarus of the healing doctor/God, Asclepius, Sneed found eleven ramps on nine different buildings. This sanctuary was the most important in the Greek world for those seeking healing, and it makes sense that there would be so many ramps there.
In other places, like the temple dedicated to Zeus in Olympia, fewer ramps were found (just two).
Such ramps testify to the recognition of a social need for physical accommodations, and they are the oldest known structures designed to help disabled people.
Source(s): Debby Sneed, “The Architecture of Access: Ramps at Ancient Greek Healing Sanctuaries,” _Antiquity_ vol 94, issue 376 August 2020, pp 1015-1029. Also _Science.org_ “Ramps for disabled people trace back to Ancient Greece,” Andrew Curry, 20 July 2020
