Sports in Ancient Civilizations

    Reading Guttman's From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports highlighted the manner in which competitions as well as sports have evolved over centuries while still maintaining core roots. He identifies the modern characteristics of sports as secularism, the quest for records, rationalization, a bureaucratic organization, quantification, specialization, and equal opportunity. In contrast, the Plains Indians involved sports with religious and ritualistic festivals and their ultimate purpose was to please the Gods and reap specific rewards. In addition, only grown men and women took place in true sports while children simply played imitation games. Similarly, the Mayans and Aztecs played a soccer-like game to challenge the Gods of the underworlds. It is clear that while ancient civilizations spearheaded the competitive spirit found in modern sports today, the sports they took place in usually had a ritualistic or religious element that raised the stakes. Even the first Greek Olympic games were staged in sacred grounds and held a deeper religious meaning, as they were enacted as offerings to the Gods. The first Olympic games were actually a race between two men, and the participants were all in the nude. As the games evolved, they became less primitive and featured many sports such as wrestling that still hold a place in the games today. The religious tradition in sports can even be traced to Notre Dame, with its strong roots in Catholicism.

    Equality in ancient sports was much different than it is today, as limitations such as a girls virginity or whether or not a boy had hit puberty were deciding factors in choosing participants, rather than the basis of athleticism and skill that we use today. These, again, were mostly due to religious reasons. The Ancient Greeks divided men and women, and adults from children in the games. Ultimately, equality was looked at very differently in ancient sporting events than it is today. While today, athleticism plays the biggest role in whether or not an athlete is able to compete, their are still many socioeconomic factors that put lower classes at a disadvantage. The rules and regulations in sporting events today are tightly regulated, but no more so than in ancient sports. The difference lies in the ways in which primitive vs. modern society each determine who is able to compete in what games. For instance, today African American athletes are associated with specific sports and positions in each sport and "They also continue to be underpaid in proportion to their ability" (Guttman 33).

    Ancient Rome is famously perhaps the furthest departure from modern sports, as tens of thousands of people watched gladiators fight each other to death in the Colosseum. The gladiators were raised and trained to kill, and through this they provided the ultimate primitive form of entertainment for spectators. The gladiators were essentially slaves that had to kill in front of crowds to gain their freedom, and as Crowe's character in Gladiator famously asked, "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?" Although a battle to the death is no longer tolerated in civilized society, the culture of watching athletes beating each other to a pulp for the sake of competition and the entertainment is still a huge part of today's society.