The Mayan Ball Game

I found out alot more research about our clever Mayan Ball Game:

• When was the rubber ball invented? Rubber and latex were used for balls by Mesoamericans as early as 1600 BC. That’s more than 3500 years ago. Centuries later, Europeans began making balls of leather, but they didn’t bounce.
• When Spaniards first saw the rubber ball bounce, they wrote in their journals that the ball must be bewitched.
• How big was the rubber ball used by ancient Mayan people? The size varied between softball and beach ball size. It weighed 8 pounds, at about the size of a watermelon.
• Were the balls used by the ancient Mayans hollow or solid? Rubber strips were wound around a smaller object to form a large hollow ball. Because it was hollow, it bounced better and higher than a solid ball.

The best quote out of here was the one about the Spaniards thinking that it was bewitched! I thought it was funny because most history books will show the Spaniards being the technologically advanced civilizations and that the indians were fools, but here it seems that the rolls were reversed.

http://www.cradleboard.org/curriculum/powwow/supplements/mayanball.html