Doing what I do for a living and being a football obsessive, I've come to develop a strong interest in the ancient origins of the game. Association Football (and rugby football and its derivatives, including that girly game they play in the States) are almost certainly derived from the medieval games of foot ball, that are still traditionally played on certain days of the year in certain parts of the country. However, the fact that games involving kicking a ball developed in other parts of the world such as China or, in this case Mexico, shows that its inherent in people to want to kick a ball about. The fact that pelota was so important in Mayan society suggests to me that the world was always going to become obsessed with watching a bunch of fellas smack a ball around. https://inews.co.uk/news/science/an...covery-sheds-light-on-ancient-culture-2269611 Edit: some better links- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-65250018.amp https://www.reuters.com/world/ameri...logists-discover-mayan-scoreboard-2023-04-11/
That's quality. I've not seen that before. I've been to Chichen Itza, where the carving in the article was found, and a couple of other Mayan sites where they have ball game courts and they played a game where they had to knock the ball through a small stone hoop. At some of them the hoops were at the top of slopes a bit like this but at Chichen Itza they were at the top of a vertical wall. There must have been a few different version of it.
I wonder what it was like, did they argue about points scored, how did they pick the teams did they have captains picking players or something more sophisticated? Were there dedicated players or did anyone who fancied it get involved on the day? I gather it was as much a religious ritual as it was a sport but at the end of the day if there's points involved there's going to be competitiveness.
When I visited Chichen Itza, they said that the winning captain was sacrificed and this was considered a great honour. So l don't know if that would make you more competitive or less! There's quite a long wiki article on it. Seems like the rules changed as time went on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Ballgame
I have played in the Ashbourne (derbyshire) shrovetide game over the years. Always for the down'ards. It is absolutely brutal, to say the least. Once the big lads get going you either smash on in, or go for a cuppa. About as much relevance to football as Pavarotti to heavy metal, but it is still steeped in early ball games / football lore. I once bought a pair of waterproof socks (yep, they worked) so I could make the river my position. Some bugger had waders on next to me so sacked that off. Games takes 2 days. Rarely sees more than a couple of goals. Ambulance lads make good overtime though
According to that it's unknown who got sacrificed and why but one theory is that the losing team copped it. You'd see some canny football matches if one player from the losing side was sacrificed at full time.
It's got its not so good bits like any job but I would find it very hard to change career. I do enjoy it a lot.
I think they're really interesting those games. Would like to hear more. There's also Calcio Fiorentino in Florence- I would quite like to see that one day.
Got interested in it watching Time Team (which I now think is a bag of ****) and studied it at university. Realised it was quite competitive to get to the higher levels of it so started a PHd looking at it from a different angle (how politics affects it) thinking that might send me in a different career direction. Ran out of money doing that so packed it in. Got a ****ty office job. Got bored of that and applied for 6 month contract just doing archaeological excavation work while I worked out what I wanted to do. Fortunately, the company I applied to liked me for some reason and offered me something more permanent which involved a bit of fieldwork and a step on the first rung of the ladder to the more analytical side of it. Long story- sorry.
Just in this country. Had the opportunity to do some work at Pompei once but it would have cost me a fair bit for accommodation and it was just for experience, not paid, and didn't have the cash at the time. Some of the stuff we work on here is just as interesting as the foreign stuff, or I think so anyway.
