Ancient Games We tend to think of sporting events as being a modern phenomenon but actually they go back thousands of years and some were much different than what we think of as sporting events today. A few years ago, an incredible ball court was discovered. It was discovered in Mexico and the amazing part of it is it was 3400 years old. The rumor is they were looking for a temple and never expected to find a sports arena. It turns out early Mesoamerican societies liked to play ball. The ball court had extensive use and archaeologists think it was used for a hundred and seventy-five years and even remodeled at least once. There is a hunch the game they played was like soccer but only the hips were used. There are also ghastly stories about these games. I have read where captured prisoners were forced to form an opposing team and if they lost they had their heads cut off. I’ve also heard sometimes the game was played for life and death with friendly teams. It doesn’t sound like something I’d want to engage in that’s for sure. Even though the games origins are unknown, statues were found which suggest they were in the Olmec tradition. Our ancestors loved games, there is evidence of this everywhere. They loved physical games where they had to use their bodies, gambling games and board games just to mention a few. When we talk about ancient games, we are talking about a couple which are still around today such as backgammon. The oldest board game is said to be Senet which was played in Egypt around 3100 B.C.. The English translation of the game is “game of passing”. The board for the game had a grid of thirty squares arranged in three rows and the pieces consisted of two sets of pawns. The ancient Egyptians certainly love their boardgames and many times royalty was buried with the game of Senet so perhaps it even had a deeper meaning to them. It is said some believed that if you are good at this game, the Sun god Ra would protect you. Another board game the Egyptians loved was Liubo. It is believed it consisted of using six sticks, but there is not much information on it today. I guess most of us know about the Olympics and how the Greeks started that event, but I wonder how many know it was started to honor the God Zeus, and was part of a religious festival. All the athletes were male and were from the city states of Greece, and other countries. The Olympics began in 776 B.C. For the first thirteen games the only event was the stadon race which was only 600 feet long. For almost 12 centuries the games were held every four years. Today archaeologists believe the games could even be much older dating back to the tenth century B.C. Nudity was common for the male contestants and is said those who wrestled covered their bodies with olive oil and sand. The ancient Olympics ended in 393 A.D. and resumed 1503 years later. The ancient Chinese also loved their games. They had many different kinds of boardgames and also martial arts among other things. In 400 B.C. the Chinese were playing a game which was an early form of chess. This spread to other countries such as India and the Indians invented Parcheesi around 300 A.D. and surprise of surprises they invented Chutes and Ladders around 1200 A.D. I was surprised to read about Chutes and Ladders since I always believed it was a child’s game and recent since I played it with my children when they were young. I just find it hard to believe the game is over 800 years old. As far as martial arts are concerned many believe they were invented by the Yellow Emperor about 2600 B.C. in China. Not everyone agrees with this and some believe they were invented as much as 1400 years later, I guess someday we will find out. Ancient Mesopotamians played the Royal Game of Ur. The game had another name and it was also called Twenty Squares and sometimes the word Royal was dropped making it the Game of Ur. It is said the game was played during the third millennia B.C. It spread across the Middle East and archaeologists have found evidence of it as far away as Sri Lanka. As the game became popular some people started to believe somehow the game could predict the future. The world forgot about this game except for a very small pocket of people which were the Jewish population of the Indian city Kochi who played it until the 1950s. Most of us know about the games the ancient Romans used to play. Many of them were bloodthirsty and resulted in death and yet the population loved them. The Romans were also big on horse racing and had tracks all over the Roman Empire so they could race their chariots. The Romans played many games including all kinds of boardgames. They play dice, knuckle bones, Roman chess, Roman checkers, tic-tac-toe and even Roman backgammon. These were not the names of the games however. Roman chess was known as Latrunculi. They called dice Tesserae, Knucklebones Tali or Tropa, Checkers Calculi, Tic-tac-toe Terni Lapilli and backgammon Tabula. Romans had all sorts of physical games such as wrestling, boxing and other physical events. These were generally men’s sports only. Ancient Iran also had its games. One of them was named Alak Dolak. The game is about 5000 years old and consisted of two teams of equal size. It is sort of a baseball like game where a wooden bat is used to hit a wooden peg which is recovered by people in the field and thrown at the dalak which is on the ground. An ancient rhyming game was also played in which people had to compose versus while music was playing. Other dance games were also played. There is no doubt we humans like to be entertained and one of the ways we like to be entertained is by playing games or by watching games. It was quite a blow to many of us when most of the sports teams in the United States suspended their activities due to the coronavirus. It was bad enough we didn’t have too many places we can go to anymore since most of them were closed and it wasn’t a good thing to mix with too many people. Humans seem to have a need for games.
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