:: Newsletter ::
Spring 2006
Basketball: Ties to Pre-Columbian America?
Archeological evidence dating back to 1600 B.C. provides clues to an ancient rubber ballgame that possibly began with the ancient Olmec people who populated the jungles of present day Gulf Coast Mexico. Likely spread through trade routes, the game and its associated religious rituals, has been “played by all major cultures of Mesoamerica. The Olmecs, the Maya, the Zapotecs, Toltecs and Aztecs…” (1a)
Dating to 700 A.D., evidence shows of its continued spread “into the American southwest where the ballgame was played on oval shaped adobe and stone courts by an expanding Hohokam culture”. Remains of over 200 of such ball courts have been found between the Mexican border and Flagstaff, Arizona,. “Rubber balls have also been recovered at Arizona sites, further confirming the connection between the Hohokam culture and Pre-Hispanic Mexican civilizations to the south.” (1b) The name Hohokam is derived from the Pima Indian (Akimel O’odham) language and translates in English to “ ‘those who have gone’ or ‘all used up’.” (2)
While the Hohokam ball courts were oval, the remains of over 600 ball courts found in present day Mexico and Central America are rectangular or an “I” shape, with two straight or sloping walls on either end and a narrow alley in between. Over time, various versions of the game included the players bouncing the ball off various part of their body and off the court walls. Around A.D. 800, a change in courts in some regions is seen with the addition of stone rings attached the central point of each the two end walls. (1c)
Note: The “I” shaped courts were likely Ulama courts, please see related story in, Students of the Game online at Smithsonianmagazine.com: http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/april/ulama.php
But in 1946 Columbus returned to Europe with a rubber ball that held its shape and kept its bounce. This was over 300 years before Charles Goodyear invented the “vulcanizing” process. A process with which he was given credit for developing, which involved the mixing of latex with sulphur and using pressurized steam vessels to cure the rubber. (3b)
To have retained its bounce, Columbus’ souvenir rubber ball from his trip to the “New World” had to have been cured or vulcanized. “In fact further excavations have revealed cured rubber objects as old as 1600 B.C.” (3c)
As it turns out, either post Columbus Europeans did not pay attention to the total process used by the New World people to make rubber or that knowledge was not documented or retained. But the process of making cured rubber that originated as early as 1600 BC with the Olmec people continues today with the people of Mexico and Central America, as was “discovered” in the late 1990’s by a research group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The team journeyed to a jungle in Mexico which was inhabited by rubber trees and indigenous people, and one of the researchers simply “asked a native walking by if he knew how to make stable cured rubber.” The man proceeded to extract the latex (uncured rubber) from a tree and mix it with juice extracted from a morning glory vine growing near the rubber tree and mixed it together. He performed this process on a very hot day. As it turns out, the morning glory juice contains high levels of sulphur. The final product of the demonstration was cured vulcanized rubber. (3d)
Not only does the process of rubber making continue to this day by some indigenous peoples of Mexico, but the process is used to make solid rubber balls used in games played today by some indigenous peoples of Mexico that are similar to the games played by their ancient predecessors. In addition to the people of Mexico, “throughout the modern world, we are all heirs of the Pre-Columbian past as we participate in team sports played with bouncing rubber balls.” (1d)
1a-d. http://linux1.tlc.north.denver.k12.co.us/~gmoreno/gmoreno/ |