Matches with sacrifices and the ball "hovering" in the air, or How different peoples of different eras played football

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The FIFA World Cup forced to follow this game even those who are usually indifferent to it and do not delve into the intricacies of the rules. What can we say about the fans who do not miss a single match of their favorite team - now they can not think of anything else at all. And in this we, people of the XXI century, are not too different from those who lived in earlier eras, including the most ancient ones. Ball games have been popular at all times, however, sometimes ancient football looked completely different.

A great honor for the winners

The Indians of South and Central America were the first to play such games - long before the Europeans came to their lands. Which is not surprising - it was they who had the opportunity to make bouncing balls from natural rubber. Different Indian tribes played with such balls in different ways: sometimes they were thrown to each other, including over some kind of obstacle, which made the game vaguely similar to modern volleyball, and sometimes they were kicked like in football. At the same time, the balls were not at all as light as they are now, they were solid rubber balls, without air inside, very heavy and tough. And playing with them was not just fun - the Indians thus developed muscles and trained in strength and endurance. Thanks to such training, they then had enough strength to hunt or to fight with neighboring tribes.

And the Mayan and Toltec Indians also gave the ball game a ritual meaning, which made their matches not only the most spectacular, but also the bloodiest on both American continents. In this game, rubber balls had to be thrown into rings, so that they most resembled basketball. At the same time, the entire match, which was usually held on the occasion of some holiday, was accompanied by sacrifices: before it began, one of the fans could be sacrificed to the gods, and after the game, this fate awaited one of the teams in full force. Moreover, historians for a long time could not agree on which of the teams went to the Indian gods - the loser or the winner. Modern fans, outraged by the loss of their favorite team, might have approved the first option, but, most likely, the ancient Indians still sacrificed the winners, since “to please the gods” in that society was considered very honorable.

Fortunately, this bloody custom has not survived to this day - otherwise there would be few people willing to participate in sports competitions. Now, championship winners run the risk of being strangled in the arms of their joyful fans.

Whipping for the losers

Rubber trees did not grow on other continents, and the ancient inhabitants of these places were not familiar with the analogue of rubber, but they also had ball games. Balls for them were sewn from leather and stuffed with grass, feathers or some other loose material. They were not particularly bouncy, but they could still be thrown to each other or thrown into nets with holes.

This is exactly how they played ball in ancient China: the playing field was blocked by a silk net with a hole stretched at a certain height, and two teams had to hammer a leather ball into this hole. This mixture of volleyball and football was called "Chu-ke", and this sport was dangerous not for the winners, but for the losers. No, they were not sacrificed, but they could have been publicly flogged - modern fans would probably approve of this too. The winners were presented with gifts and treated with various delicacies, and the most skillful players could get a promotion at work or a new military rank.

Ball "hovering" in the air

In Japan, since ancient times, there was a game "Kemari", which has survived to this day, for which a leather ball filled with sawdust is used. Players in it must keep this ball in the air for as long as possible, tossing it with their feet and not letting it touch the ground. Kemari was so popular that even some Japanese emperors took part in it, and there is a legend about how one of them managed to keep the ball above the ground, hitting it more than a thousand times.

The most successful Japanese players in "Kemari" could get a high title, and since there was nowhere to raise the monarch further, the emperor from this legend appropriated a loud title … to the ball with which he set a record.

Ancestor of British football

In Sparta, not only men, but also women could play the analogue of modern football, which bore the name "Episkros" or "Faininda". The playing field was divided into two halves, and each team, which could be from five to twelve people, tried to keep the ball in its territory, and if it was captured by the opposing team, to take it away and return it to itself. A ball twisted of linen and woolen threads and wrapped with ropes on top - in fact, it was a huge ball - was allowed to be beaten with both feet and hands.

The ancient Romans adopted many different traditions from the Greeks, and Episkros was no exception. The Romans began to call this game "Garpastum" and developed many complex combinations that allowed players to take possession of the ball and beat it off to members of their team. It was from the Roman conquerors that they learned about the game of ball in the British Isles, where much later the game that preceded modern football was formed.

Different footballs, different balls …

At first, football was played in England according to different rules. Most often, it was possible to hit the ball with both feet and hands, and the number of players in the team was not strictly limited. And this continued until the middle of the 19th century: each private school and university had its own football team and its own rules, which often led to conflicts when different teams met. An end to this was put by the "Cambridge Rules" adopted in 1846, which were close to the modern ones. Subsequently, they were corrected several times, and as a result that game, familiar to all of us, appeared, in which the national teams of different countries are now fighting for the title of world champion.

After the adoption of the uniform rules, many teams continued to play by their own rules, and as a result, several more sports team games arose like football: rugby league, or Australian football, as well as American, Canadian and Gaelic football. In these sports, the rules are noticeably different from ordinary football, in most of them the ball can be taken with your hands, and in Canadian football, moreover, the ball is not round, but oval.

But the most popular of all these games for more than a hundred years has been classic football, which can only be played without hands.

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