Football has a 3,400-year-old ancestor, as even FIFA's president has acknowledged.
The oldest Mesoamerican ballcourt, at Paso de la Amada in Mexico, dates to about 1400 BC; its solid rubber balls weighed up to 4 kg.
The events
- The rubber balls of El Manatíc. 1600 BC–1200 BC · Veracruz, Mexico. Around 1600–1200 BC the Olmecs left offerings in the bog of El Manatí: wooden busts, axes and rubber balls. The muck preserved them remarkably well; the balls are the oldest rubber objects known and were probably used in the Mesoamerican ballgame.
- Rise of Olmec San Lorenzoc. 1200 BC · San Lorenzo. On the Gulf Coast of Mexico, San Lorenzo became the first great Olmec centre, famed for its colossal stone heads. The Olmecs are often called the 'mother culture' of later Mesoamerican civilisations.
More amazing facts
- 1450 BC · 1952 The oldest Greek writing was cracked by an architect and self-taught linguist.
- 1450 BC · 69 BC · 1878 Cleopatra's Needle is almost 1,400 years older than Cleopatra: it was raised under Thutmose III around 1450 BC, and she was born in 69 BC.
- 1400 BC The oldest substantially complete piece of written music is about 3,400 years old: a hymn to the goddess Nikkal, notated in cuneiform on a clay tablet from Ugarit in Syria around 1400 BC.
- 1400 BC · 1993 The oldest horse-training manual sets out a 214-day programme.
- 1370 BC We even know the season when the Egtved Girl was buried in Denmark: summer, 1370 BC. The tree rings of her oak coffin say so, and a yarrow flower had been laid on it.
- 1350 BC · 1963 In ancient Egypt a pregnancy test used grain: a woman urinated on wheat and barley, and if they sprouted, she was pregnant.