The ancient Greeks, if you go by ancient scriptures, used athletics as a core part of many of their religious festivals. Even in 776 BC, when all of Greece came together in the valley of Olympia to take part in the first ever Olympic games, it was more about honouring the greatest of all Greek gods, Zeus, than anything else. But sports wasn't bound to one particular culture or religion - it went beyond that and that was the beauty of it.
Cave paintings found in the Lascaux caves depict humans sprinting and wrestling approximately 173,000 years ago. Cave paintings in the Bayankhongor Province of Mongolia in the Neolithic age of 7000 BC, the prehistoric cave paintings in Japan, carvings on stone slabs in the Sumerian civilisation around 3000 BC, and many other cave paintings around the world show different forms wrestling to be one of the oldest individual sports known to man. But the game that somehow got lost in time also happened to be the first team sport known to mankind - Ulama.
Ulama - The oldest sport in the world
Played in Mesoamerica for the past 3,500 years, almost a millennium before the first Olympics took place, Ulama is the oldest recorded sport in history. It was a fast-paced game that would border on brutality as loss of lives were common occurrences of the game, also making it one of the most brutal sports ever witnessed.
It was never just a sport. Ever since its inception in the ancient times till the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, Ulama has been as integral to the Mesoamerican culture as perhaps cricket is for India. Known as Pok a Tok to the Mayans, Tlachtli to the Aztec, Ulama was also the first ball game that was violent and gruesome to the core. Death wasn't an uncommon sight here as most players would end the game badly bruised.
How was it played?
A classic Ulama ball court, ruins of which can still be spotted across various regions of South America, like the Great Ballcourt in the Mayan city of Chichen Itzá, is about 315 feet long and 98 feet wide. Massive. But there are other courts smaller in size like the ceremonial court in modern day Guatemala which was 52 feet long and 16 feet wide. When shot from an aerial view it would look like a capital "I" with perpendicular end zones. It was played on a rectangular field with slanted stone walls that were plastered and painted in bright colours.
The teams would line up on either side of the court facing each other with walls on either side, used to bounce off the heavy rubber ball. It wasn't easy at all - the heavy balls would end up weighing as much as 4 kilos. To put it simply, imagine the sport to be similar to volleyball with no nets and except for the hands, the players would return the ball primarily using their hips. The ball had to cross a line instead of a net and had to be kept constantly in motion without touching the ground. There were also a couple of stone hoops in the centre of the ring on either side, and getting the ball through the stone hoop would end the game. When the players missed a shot or were unable to return the ball, points would be scored. The team with most points would win the game.
The dangers involved are pretty evident. The 4-kilo-basketball-sized ball could injure people badly including damaging a person internally. Secondly, the ball is not allowed to go out or touch the walls so a lot of people would end up smashing themselves against the wall to save a point. It was only when people started getting badly injured and dying that protective armour for the game was introduced.
A ritual that died
It was more like a ritual, this game. Played at various religious festivals, some of the variations of the game were nothing short of the brutality we've see in a period drama like Game of Thrones. It reached a point where it had become a matter of life and death. The game, religiously, would be viewed as a battle between the sun and the moon and other stars representing the dark side going up against the light. If a particular game had a religious meaning it would end in human sacrifice as the losing team were ordered to be decapitated. The Spanish, thanks to the brutal nature of the game, banned the practice of Ulama. Now, there are only a small number of people in the world practising Ulama, in Mexico, in order to keep the ancient tradition intact.