Games Competition between two animals of the same species for limited resources such as

8.1.2 Games Competition between two animals of the same species for limited resources such as

food, water, mating rights, and territory often leads to conflict. Rams butt heads together to determine the winners and losers. Young goats often imitate their elders and engage in head butting perhaps as an exercise in preparation for things to come. Charles Darwin proposed the theory of sexual selection to explain some evolution- ary traits as “the struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex.” Many of our athletic contests have their origins in military action, toned down to be less deadly. In the Iliad, Achilles held the funeral games to honor Patrocleus, which consisted of a chariot race, a foot race, throwing of iron lumps and spears, archery, boxing, wrestling, and dueling with spears and shields. The spoils of a real war can be the possession of kingdoms and slaves; the trophies for the games were scaled down to include cauldron tripods, stallions, cattle, and lovely women.

Modern games take many forms, and the most popular are athletic games and tabletop games—the former stresses strength and speed, and the latter stresses

291 agility and thinking. A game requires not only a set of equipment but also a set of

8.1 PARTY AND PLAY

rules. In a foot race, no one starts till a signal is given. When two goats lock horns to determine who is stronger, they are not allowed to charge till the opponent is ready; once defeat is admitted, the loser is not allowed to sneak in another attack when the winner is not prepared. Expulsion and disgrace are in store for a game player who participates in unsportsmanlike conduct.

A rolling object appeals to a kitten or puppy, as well as to a baby. Ball games such as soccer, football, basketball, tennis, cricket, and ping-pong are certainly among the most important of athletic games. Chinese emperors played “cuqiu” or kick ball, from the period of the Warring Nations in the third century BCE. The Olmecs and Aztecs in Mexico played an elaborate ball game with great courts, equipped with stone rings that were high above the ground, where two teams would try to bounce solid rubber balls through a ring. This may have been both a religious ceremony of great solemnity and a ball game for fun. The Persians played a game of polo (the King of Games) on horseback and the Mongols continued the game a thousand years later, using the headless carcasses of sheep instead of balls. Most ball games involve kicking, throwing, or hitting a ball with a stick, resulting in a ball in flight that should be long and accurate. After the invention of a ball game and its rules, many inventions can follow to make the ball’s trajectory longer and more accurate.

Egyptian footballs were made of soft leather or fine linen and stuffed with reeds or straw. By the third century BCE, the Chinese had a ball game where the ball was made of an inflated bladder, usually from a pig, and covered with hide. In front of the emperor’s palace, the opposing teams would try to kick the ball through holes in silk nets. The original Scottish golf balls were made of wood, which were replaced in the seventeenth century with hand sewn leather pouches stuffed with chicken or goose feathers.

When a ball flies rapidly through the air, it meets significant resistance so that

a light ball cannot fly very far. With the exception of ping-pong that has a short trajectory, most of the small balls for organized sports are solid, such as those in golf and baseball, but the larger balls can be filled with air, such as basketball and football. An air-inflated bladder has very good elasticity to store the energy of impact for later release to become the energy of flight; wood and stuffed feathers, however, do not have the best elasticity and give very inferior bounce. A far supe- rior solid stuffing emerged with the invention of vulcanized rubber. We have noted, in Chapter 2, about the origin of rubber balls in the Americas, as observed by the followers of Christopher Columbus, and the transformation of raw and unsatisfactory rubber by Goodyear, through vulcanization with sulfur under heat into the all-weather vulcanized rubber that remains elastic in hot or cold weather. In 1898, Coburn Haskell of Cleveland, Ohio, made a solid golf ball wound with layers of rubber thread and covered with a thin outer shell. It had a superb bounce charac- teristic and easily stored the energy of impact from the golf club and released the energy in speed. Today, synthetic polyurethane is often the favored material for filling the solid cores.

Several methods have been invented to overcome the aerodynamic resistance on a ball when it flies through air. A thrilling attack in an American football game