Aztec Rubber Ball

The ball that was used for the ball game in mesoamerica was in fact made of rubber.

Aztec rubber ball.

Due to the rough. The aztec ball game had a distinctive court known as the tlachtli or tlachco. The aztec olmec and maya of mesoamerica are known to have made rubber using natural latex a milky sap like fluid found in some plants. The bouncing rubber balls used to play today s most popular sports can be traced back 3 500 years to the dangerous and deadly ancient mesoamerican sport of ulama.

The aztec version of the ballgame is called ōllamalitzli sometimes spelled ullamaliztli and are derived from the word ōlli rubber and the verb ōllama or to play ball. 3 archaeological evidence indicates that rubber was already in use in mesoamerica by the early formative period a dozen balls were found in the olmec el manati sacrificial bog and dated to roughly 1600 bce. The ball court was usually in the shape of an i although there were some variations. The resultant rubber would then be formed into rubber strips which would be wound around a solid rubber core to build the ball.

The use of rubber was important in the olmec aztec and maya civilizations of mesoamerica. The ball or ulli was made of hard rubber and weighed about 9 pounds. Around the court was a slope surrounded at the outer edge by walls about 8 11 feet high.