History
The word ulama comes from the Nahuatl word ōllamaliztli a combination of ōllama (playing of a game with a ball) and ōlli (rubber). Ōllamaliztli was the Aztec name for the Mesoamerican ballgame, whose roots extended back to at least the 2nd millennium BC and evidence of which has been found in nearly all Mesoamerican cultures in an area extending from modern-day Mexico to El Salvador, and possibly in modern-day Arizona and New Mexico. Archaeologists have uncovered rubber balls dated to at least 1600 BC, ballplayer figurines from at least 1200 BC, and nearly 1500 ancient ball courts.
However, due to its religious and ritual aspects, Spanish Catholics suppressed the game soon after the Spanish conquest, leaving it to survive in areas such as Sinaloa, where Spanish influence was less pervasive.
Read more about this topic: Ulama (game)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
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—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)