Sports

The games that involve a ball in present day sports are: soccer, American football, rugby, basketball, volleyball and many more. Each country may have different names for each of these games, for example, some call it soccer other call it futbol/football. In the end they are all the same game, opposing teams trying to prove their skills with a round spherical looking object. Back in the period of the Mayans they had a game that was a combination of some present day ball sports, “sport had different versions in different places during the millennia, and a modern version of the game, ulama, is still played in a few places by the local indigenous population”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame).
This Mesoamerican ball game, was usually mainly for ritual purposes, so it was directed towards the gods. The rules of the game are not known exactly but looking at the remains and the modern day version, ulama, it resembles racquetball or volleyball. The act of the game was to hit the ball with your hip, some places allowed use of limbs/forearms and racquets. The amazing thing was the fact that the ball was made out of rubber and weighed almost 4 kg, not a very light ball at all. Since these games were usually done in rituals there usually came a sacrifice with it. Through Mayan art, it can be seen when captives were taken they would play a “rigged” game and when losing the game they would be sacrificed to the gods. Funny, how our simple ball games could of evolved from a cultural game devoted to gods.