Scientists are of the opinion that man has evolved after being first born in the sea. Historians will attest to the fact there a are cave drawings in Egypt that people swan even at that time but had probably been swimming from long before that time. Even the first written reference to swimming are over 4000 years old. We also know that there were swimming competitions organized in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, and such competitions were held even prior to that date for certain. As far as swimming styles are concerned, John Arthur Trudgen popularized the front crawl in 1873, but it was probably already widely used at the time. However, until that year, the breaststroke was the more popular swimming style in most of Europe and the US. Much later, the butterfly stroke became popular in 1952, even though it existed earlier but was considered a variation of the already popular breaststroke.