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The resounding announcement that football legend Lionel Messi will join the Inter Miami Major League Soccergot us thinking: after all, who invented this sport?
Football is by far the most popular sport in the world and there’s good reason for that – loved by at least 265 million people around the world, it’s easy to play in any backyard or field and feel an immediate connection. with players running in stadiums around the world.
However, if you’re looking for the earliest ancestor of all that running, kicking and co-op, be prepared to travel back in time, spin the globe and make sure you don’t lose your mind – literally. We tell you what you need to know about football’s ancient origins.
The ancestral origins of football
Os Chinese were the first to amuse themselves by kicking balls into goals in the 20th century. 3 BC and the game known globally as football was formalized in England in the 19th century. However, the predecessor of all current ball games can be found in the Americas.
“The idea of team sports was invented in Mesoamerica,” says Mary Miller, a professor of art history at Yale University who has studied numerous evidence of the sport.
KENNETH GARRETT / NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
A latex ball of Olmec origin, from around 3,000 years ago. It is unknown if this ball would have been used for playing or if it was a ritual ball. Given its impeccable condition, it would probably be the last option.
In Mesoamerica, the vast historical region that stretches from Mexico to Costa Rica, various civilizations flourished and many of these peoples played a sport that involved a heavy ball made of a substance derived from tree resin.
It is not known for sure where the game was invented, but it was popular among Mesoamerican cultures such as the Osteotihuacans, Aztecs and Mayans as early as 3,000 years ago. Its name varied – ullamaliztli me aztec, poke-ta-pok or crack in Maya – and the rules too, including moves like keeping the ball in play by touching it with body parts, rackets or bats.
Many of these games were played with rubber balls weighing seven kilos, which still exist in the archaeological record. Other evidence ranges from ceramic vessels to over 1300 large stone fields, which can be found throughout the region.
Aztec players passed the ball between teams using only the hips and buttocks (the use of feet and hands was prohibited). They tried to get to the back of their opponents’ half with just one touch of the ball, often suffering potentially fatal injuries when hit by the hard, heavy ball. If a player managed to insert it into a hoop set up at a certain height in the opposing team’s field, victory would be automatic – and a huge honor for the winner.
making sacrifices
Although it was an everyday sport, as football or basketball are now, this ball game also played a sacred role in the practices of religion it’s yes guerra among Mesoamerican cultures. Aztec kings allegedly played it as a substitute for war, gaining governing rights or settling diplomatic disputes with a ball game. In the Mayan and Veracruz Culturesthere was even more at stake: those defeated in some ritual games were sacrificed.
We don’t know the details, but some fields are decorated with panels that portray the bloody sacrifice of vanquished players. Sacrifice and sport were also closely related in a Mayan creation myth, which shows a pair of twins defeating the lords of the underworld in a game of ball – they end up becoming the Sun and the Moon.
MARTIN GRAY / NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
Long before basketball and soccer, the ancient Maya would team up on the field for the Mesoamerican ball game. Today, in Hidalgo, Mexico, a group of athletes are determined to bring back the ancient ball game and honor the traditions of their ancestors.
Despite evidence that losers were sometimes literally wiped out, says Miller, some 20th-century archaeologists refused to believe that any players other than the winners, were killed. “They couldn’t believe that the Mayans practiced human sacrifice,” she said. “We now know that this is nonsense, as is the idea that any winning player would be sacrificed.” In Mayan mythology, the loser of the ball game is beheaded. and scholars are now generally agreed that it was the losers, not the winners, who faced death.
British schools invent a new version
Although other cultures such as Native Americans and Indigenous Australians played similar games, the sport now known as football was born in british schools. Although variants of the game have been played informally for centuries, the sport was formalized in the 19th century.
In mid- XIX centurydevelopments in transport, work and technology have given people free time and means to travel and attend competitive games on grass fields. In the 1840s, a series of British schools created their own game rules, making it possible to organize tournaments between players who knew the same rules.
Over time, two different sets of rules began to dominate the sport. O Sheffield Football Club offered teams a penalty kick if the opponent disobeyed the rules of the game and the Cambridge University forbade players to carry the ball with their hands.
Public domain
Cover page of “Rules, Regulations and Laws of the Sheffield Foot-Ball Club, a list of members etc”. Sheffield: Pawson and Brailsford, 1859, first edition, 16mo (122 x 77 mm), the only known copy of the first printing of the laws of the first football club.
As the sport’s popularity soared, players joined together, forming the London Football Association. In 1877, Sheffield officially adopted the so-called “London rules”. By that time, some teams had already begun recruiting players, secretly paying working-class league members.
Footballers from the upper classes wanted the sport to remain amateur. In 1885, however, they finally agreed with the existence of professional players, allowing a new leap in the sport. By 1904, the sport was so popular that it had become international. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was created that same year.
football today
Football success skyrocketed from here. After Sport’s debut at the 1908 Olympics and from the first FIFA World Cup in 1930, professional football flourished. FIFA continues to be the body that regulates the sport, having invoiced 755.5 million in 2021 alone.
However, the heart of the game has always been the course, where everyone from young children to seasoned professional athletes can enjoy the action. The spirit of football, which Miller describes as “intricate team thinking,” is alive and well in modern versions of the ball game and among the millions of amateur and professional players who run, dribble and kick the ball on official pitches. or improvised every day.
2023-06-27 10:39:00
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