Ancient Sports Elsewhere
Sports that are at least two and a half thousand years old include hurling in Ireland, harpastum (similar to rugby) in Rome, cuju (similar to association football) in China, and polo in Persia. The Mesoamerican ballgame originated over three thousand years ago. There are artifacts and structures that suggest that the Chinese engaged in sporting activities as early as 2000 BC. Gymnastics appears to have been a popular sport in China's ancient past. Ancient Persian sports such as the traditional Iranian martial art of Zourkhaneh. Among other sports that originated in Persia are polo and jousting. A polished bone implement found at Eva in Tennessee, USA and dated to around 5000 BC has been construed as a possible sporting device used in a "ring and pin" game.
Read more about this topic: History Of Sport
Famous quotes containing the words ancient and/or sports:
“An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)