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People have been flying kites for a very long time. There is a
lack of archeological evidence of kites due to their fragile nature
and all that remains are depictions and references to them in paintings,
frescos, poems, written records and oral traditions.
The oldest surviving kites are about two hundred years old.
The oldest reference to a kite is over two thousand years
old. One fact that is known for sure is that kite flying
is more popular now than ever. There are huge kite festivals
all around the world. The biggest being the Indian Ahmedabad
Kite Festival which takes place on January 14th of each year
where kites by the millions are estimated to fly
during the two day festival that mark the end of winter.
Kite flying probably began as a tool to communicate
with the spirits of ancient people’s animistic world. The
Mayans are thought to have communicated with their
ancestors by attaching messages to large disk shaped kites, as practiced
in festivals by their descendants today in Central America.
The Chinese are generally credited as being some
of the earliest people to build and fly kites. They had the ideal
materials to work with, silk and bamboo,
both light in weight and strong. Kite building became an art form
that seem to have developed independently around the world then
spread and mingled with one another to create a myriad of new styles
and design.
Curiously Europeans are thought to not know about kites until Marco
Polo brought back detailed descriptions of Chinese
kites in the late 13th century. I find it hard to believe that ordinary
people of Europe did not fly kites until over a thousand years later
than the rest of the world. There is a drawing
from 4th century BC Greece of a girl flying a kite.
It follows that if Greek and Roman children played
with kites then pre-medieval European children must have also.
Just as the textile technology enabled kite building
on a broader scale, modern technology has spurned the growth of
the kite industry to new heights. Using carbon fibers,
graphite, Mylar, Kevlar, Tyvek and other space age materials in
conjunction with modern design tools like computer modeling
and wind tunnel testing, kite designers have been
able to work around many of the old constraints of size, strength
and weight and have created an enormous diversity
of kites. Just about any object can be replicated as a kite and
flown.
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