The Mesoamerican city of Chichen Itza is home to the best-preserved, and largest playing court for the first ball sports played in a team.
The popular sport is known as the "Ball Game" and has been played since 1650BCE. It was played by all its major civilizations from the Olmecs to the Maya to the Aztecs.
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The earliest athletic competitions seem to be simple wrestling contests that are represented in cave paintings.
Other popular sports included foot-races, chariot-races, boxing, swimming, and archery. The Ball Game was probably the first sport that resembled modern team ball sports.
Chichen Itza was founded by the Itza, a Mayan tribe, and was once one of the greatest Mayan centers of the Yucatan peninsula. The Mayan civilization created the most highly developed writing system in the Americas before Columbus landed. The Mayans are also known for a sophisticated calendar and huge architecture.
Today Chichen Itza is a sprawling ruined city in the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula in modern Mexico. Several prominent stone structures of the city are well-preserved, such as the Warrior's Temple, the Temple of Kukulcan, and the El Caracol - a circular observatory.
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Mohenjo-Daro is a city in today's Pakistan that pioneered new standards of urban sanitation. Mohenjo-Daro was the earliest and largest urban center of the ancient Indus Valley civilization, constructed circa 2500 BCE.
The people of the Indus Valley civilization invented new water supply and sanitation devices, including piping and a complex sewage system. Most of the city's houses had indoor baths and latrines with drains. This civilization is thought even to surpass the plumbing system of the later Roman civilization.
The city's population grew to around 300,000 people. It remained the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, as well as Roman and Byzantine Egypt, for almost a thousand years.
Alexandria was designed by the architect Dinocrates of Rhodes, using a Hippodamian gridiron street plan. The city was cosmopolitan and diverse. It consisted of Greeks, Jew, and Egyptian Arabs.
Ancient Rome built sophisticated infrastructure ranging from bridges, amphitheatres, aqueducts and even sewer systems.
The Roman network of roads, called Viae Romanae and meaning ‘Roman Ways’ was a huge breakthrough in quick and easy transportation of trade goods, military supplies, and free movement of civilians and soldiers.