Ullamaliztli
Mesoamerican Ball Game Predated Vulcanized Rubber by 3,000 Years
© PJ Rooks
Jan 2, 2009
Charles Goodyear: Passionate Scientist
When thinking of Charles Goodyear,what comes to mind are tires, cars and masters of industry. Thanks to a son with much better business acumen than his own, it's not well-remebered that Charles Goodyear spent his life in and out of debtor's prison thanks his pathological obsession with an "inert substance," -- rubber -- "which so excites the mind," as he described it.
If you tamper with something long enough, you're bound to have a serendipitous turn of events sooner or later -- and that's exactly how it went for Charles Goodyear and his British rival Thomas Hancock. For years the two men doggedly fumbled toward the discovery of vulcanization (a process by which gooey, raw rubber is made strong and flexible by combining it with sulfur then heating to about 130° F). In the end, however, even though it was Goodyear who discovered the process, Hancock won the race to the patent office (Loadman, 2008).
Little did either of them know that a bit of historical research would have catapulted them well ahead of the competition much more quickly than their daily tinkerings with powders and drying agents ever could have. Little did either of them suspect that natives of Mexico and Central America had learned how to process rubber more than 3,000 years earlier.
Before the current era of synthetics, all rubber came from the Castilla elastica tree, which was indigenous to South and Central America. A little slice into the tree sets loose an oozing, weeping, sticky substance which, the Mesoamericans found, could be mixed with the sulfuric juices of the sweet potato vine to create a springy, yet durable, latex compound useful for making sandals, dolls, hammers, and of course, balls.
Let the Games Begin...
Where there are balls, there must, of course, be sports.
Because the balls used in the Aztec and Mayan game of Ullamaliztli were much larger than any ball seen on a field today (up to 15 pounds!), players dressed in padded clothes and physical contact with the ball only occurred at hip-level. The game re-enacted the adventures of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, from the Mayan religious text, the Popol Vuh (Loadman, 2008). According to the legend, Hunahpu and Xbalanque gave their lives in battle and were reborn as the sun and moon. Likewise, in the game's retelling of the saga, losers were sometimes given up for human sacrifice. Gambling for valuables such as land and slaves was also a common sideline activity for spectators.
Crossing the Atlantic
In 1528, Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes presented the ball, the players and the game to the court of Charles V. Far more fun than the low-bouncing, hair-stuffed balls prevalent in Europe at the time, the arrival of the rubber balls quickly led to an ongoing smuggling of rubber tree seeds out of Central America and the burgeoning rubber industry that helped to catalyze the Industrial Revolution.
Sources:
Burton, T. (2002.) Did you know? Facts & fiction with a Mexican twist, MexicoConnect.com.
Halber, D. (1999.) Rubber processed in ancient Mesoamerica, MIT researchers find, Massachusetts Institute of Technology News Office.
Loadman, J. (2008.) Everything you ever wanted to know about rubber, Bouncing-balls.com.
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