Games and Sports

Games and sports appear to be universal features of human culture, both past and present. Archaeological investigations have uncovered numerous artifacts from game play in sites around the world. These include implements related to games of physical skill, such as balls and hoops, game boards, board game pieces, and playing cards for games of strategy, and dice, used in games of chance. Boards and pieces for games similar to draughts (checkers in North American English) have been found in the ancient city of Ur in modern day Iraq dating to approximately 3,000 BCE (Oxland 2004) and in Egypt dating to as early as 600 BCE (Masters 1997). Early athletic games, or sports, are well known from archaeological and narrative sources. A variety of art forms, including painting and sculpture, from around the world commonly depict play in games and sports. The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BCE) described games and other pastimes in Egypt and Lydia (western present-day Turkey) while the Roman historian Tacitus (55-120 CE) described dice games among Germanic tribes. The remains of the ancient Greek Olympic games, often dated to 776 BCE, are well known and include both the site where games were held but also implements, such as javelins and discuses. In ancient Rome, a variety of sports, some transformed from Greek predecessors, were held, initially in gymnasia and palaestrae and later in large stadia, such as the Circus Maximus, and amphitheaters, such as the Colosseum. Popular sports included chariot racing, held in the Circus Maximus, and gladiatorial combats held in the Colosseum.

The Mesoamerican ballgame  known as öllamalitzli in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, is one of the best-known team games of physical skill from the ancient world. It is depicted in frescoes, stone carvings, on painted pottery, and by clay figurines of players found in numerous sites in Mexico and Central America. The oldest of these, at Paso de la Armada, in the western Mexican state of Chiapas, dates to approximately 1400 BCE. Game play often had important symbolic or ritual (sometimes involving human sacrifice) aspects as well as more practical purposes, including dispute resolution, status acquisition, and as a vehicle for gambling. But it was also played purely for recreation and possibly even by women (Whittington 2001). While the exact rules for the game are unknown, a modern version, known as ulama is still played in northwestern Mexico, primarily in the states of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Durango (Fox 2012).

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