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Take me out to the ballgameIt is a strange coincidence that many popular sports played today with a ball, big or small, were first played in the latter half of the 19th century. Only cricket set its rules earlier, in 1788.Basketball was invented in 1891. Other sports had antecedents: soccer, rugby andAmerican football were all formalised in the 1860s and 1870s from what appears to be a common origin, while baseball was standardised around that time, as was golf — though many Scots claim earlier origins. Tennis as we know it today was devised by Major WalterClopton Wingfield, aBritish army officer, for the entertainment of guests at his country estate in 1873. Tennis, though, is an exception in that the indoor form of the game was played with formal rules inEngland and France at least as far back as 1600.But even this is recent compared with ulama, a game once played all over Mesoamerica, from theAmerican Southwest to Peru.The oldest ulama court, in the Mexican state ofChiapas, was built around 1500BC, while latex balls used by the Olmecs, farther west, have been carbon-dated to 300 — 500 years earlier. This is not to say the rules of ulama have not changed over the years-ritual sacrifice of the losers is thought to have died out in the 1300s.But, says ManuelAguilar, a professor atCalifornia State University, in LosAngeles, who studies the game, it is unique in having a continual recorded history stretching back almost 4 ,000 years. Dr.Aguilar and his colleague JamesBrady have been directing a group of students in Sinaloa, a state in western Mexico. They have started a comprehensive study of ulama de cadera, one of three forms of ulama surviving in Sinaloa, which is perhaps the only place where the once-widespread game is still playe
D、DrAguilar speculates that this is because Sinaloa was a frontier during the time of the Spanish colonisation of theAmericas, when ulama was largely eliminated by the intervention ofCatholic missionaries who decried its pagan associations.Ulama is played on a long, narrow court, called a taste, which is 60 metres long and only four metres wide. The opposing sides, of five players each, take turns serving the four kilogram rubber ball and thereafter trying to move the ball up the field, hitting it only with the hip or upper thigh, which are protected by special garments. Points are scored if one team fails to return the other’’s serve across the halfway point of the taste, or if the serving team succeeds in getting the ball past the opponent’’s end line. The first team to score eight points wins.However, asDrAguilar and his colleagues point out in a series of papers forthcoming in the May issue ofEstudios Jaliscienses, a Mexican journal, the rules of ulama are still today in flux, and often not even understood by the participants. This is why in a match each team brings a veedor, an elder who is meant to settle disputes over the rules. Dr.Aguilar, though, is less concerned with the details of the rules of the game, but with its social implications, both in Sinaloa today, and in Mesoamerica generally over the course of ulama’’s history. WhileDrBrady is, by training, an anthropologist, and so directs the team’’s efforts to compile an ethnography of the present-day game,DrAguilar is an art historian. While this may seem an unorthodox pairing, it has allowed them to make some novel insights.For example, until their recent work, it was believed in academia that ulama was only played by men. However, in their detailed questioning of current players, they found that women play the game today, albeit as an exception, because female players are often stigmatized as being too macho. One of their informants is 94 years old and remembers female players from his youth, so the researchers are fairly certain that women have played throughout the 20th century.AndDrAguilar’’s analysis of clay figurines, he says, indicates that women played routinely in pr