THE PIG BLADDER: HUMANITY’S FAVORITE TOY

While the case of ball games in the ancient epic of Gilgamesh remains open to interpretation, their existence in ancient Egypt is indisputable. Tomb frescoes reveal not only the Egyptians' belief in the afterlife but also their very earthly pleasures. Among these are depictions of girls juggling round objects. In addition, well-preserved round balls made of reeds or linen and leather balls stuffed with hair or straw have been found in tombs. Archeologists even uncovered a bowling set in one child's tomb, where the ball and pins were made of stone.

There has been much more evidence of balls being used for play in ancient Greece than in other places. However, the ball was regarded with a certain condescension there. The great ancient Greek sports tradition, with its stadiums, gymnasiums, palaestrae, and Olympic Games, was founded on athletics and various forms of wrestling. The ball was an object of entertainment rather than competition. Unsurprisingly, ancient pottery depicts women playing with balls more often than men. Indeed, in Homer'siHomer( born c. 8th century BC) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature.Odyssey, the beautiful princess Nausicaa is portrayed playing with a ball:

«After having fed herself, her friends, and maidens,

The princess called them to play ball, having laid aside their veils».

Ancient Greek literary sources do not associate the ball or ball games with words like ‘victory’ or ‘defeat’, but a rough kind of men's ball game did emerge there. It was called episkyros (the Romans would later call it harpastum), and it was a rather brutal spectacle reminiscent of modern rugby. The ball in this game wasn't supposed to bounce (ancient balls, understandably, had issues with bouncing) as it was made of linen or wool, tightly wrapped with rope, and sewn with threads.

The ancient Romans, however, greatly enjoyed ball games. There were dozens of solo, paired, and team ball games played in the Roman Empire, and the Romans had three types of balls.

The first type, a small ball slightly larger than a fist, was usually stuffed with hair, and sometimes sand or sawdust. This leather ball was called a pila, which was thrown by hand. Games with it generally involved throwing the ball to each other over a long distance.

The second type, the follis, was made from the bladder of a cow or pig, inflated with air, and tied off. We know that the follis was used in a game similar to volleyball, with two teams passing it back and forth. Games played with the follis were popular as entertainment in the thermae (baths) and were considered a healthy activity that strengthened the body. The physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who lived at the turn of the first century CE, advised his convalescing patients:

‘Exercise should always precede food ... good exercises include loud reading, fencing, playing ball ... walking ... better in the open air than under a portico; better, if the head can withstand it, in the sun rather than in the shade ... after exercise should come a bath’.iCelsus, De Medicina, (On Medicine)

However, games with the follis were not deemed entirely suitable for healthy, robust young men, who were expected to engage in more serious exertions. In one of his epigrams, Martial, a Roman poet who lived between circa 41 CE and circa 101 CE, insists:

‘Young men, away! A feeble age approaches me; it is fitting only for old men and boys to play with an inflatable ball.’

The third type of ball, the paganica, was made of leather and stuffed with feathers or wool. It was slightly larger than a modern football and it was used similarly—by kicking it with the feet or hitting it with the thigh.

By the way, this ancient Greek bas-relief is engraved on the cup, which is awarded to the European Football Champions

The Romans did not particularly stand out among the other peoples of the world for their love of balls—it's just that we have access to a lot of well preserved information about Roman daily life. And no matter which region we look at, we will inevitably find at least a few variations of ball games. Playing football was a popular pastime for both aristocrats in ancient Japan and peasant children in Korea. Steppe dwellers entertained their children by making balls from leather and felt; Africans were just as skilled as the Romans at inflating ox bladders; Slavs made balls from birch bark; and the Nenets and Koryaks played a kind of hybrid between hockey and football using the round head of a seal instead of a ball.

Balls were also popular in ancient China, where a game resembling football called cuju spread during the first millennium CE.

However, the ball was most popular on another continent—America. The Mesoamerican ball game was not just a hobby: stadiums were built for the game, and the games themselves were often combined with ritual sacrifices (which were quite common in pre-Columbian America). The rules of the game are unknown, but it's clear that the players had to be very physically fit because although they were no larger than a modern football, the balls weighed around 4 kilograms and were made from solid rubber. In this respect, the Mesoamericans were luckier than all other inhabitants of Earth. Even though their continent had few workable metals and no large hoofed animals to ride or yoke to carts, it was densely covered with rubber trees.

Bouncing and springy balls were, of course, far superior to any rags stuffed with feathers.

However, it is possible that rubber balls were not the only ones used in America. Some researchers believe that in addition to ordinary game balls, there were also ritual balls made using a skull covered with leather. The images on which these researchers base their conclusions were found at a stadium in the ancient city of Chichen Itza.

When the Spanish arrived on the island of Haiti,i then called Hispaniolathey documented the local ball games they came across. What amazed the Europeans most was that the Indigenous ball bounced off the ground with ease.

Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, the royal historian at the court of Charles V,1¹Charles V was the king of Spain (1516–56) and the Holy Roman Emperor (1519–58).wrote: ‘I do not understand how the balls, striking the ground, fly into the air with such an incredible bounce.’

The Dominican monk Brother Diego Durán was equally impressed: ‘Its bouncing is its quality, up and down, back and forth. This can exhaust the pursuer running after the ball before he can catch it.’iJohn Fox. The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game. HarperCollins, 2012. P. 103

For a long time, however, rubber balls from the New World had little impact on the sports life of the Old World. Medieval Europe saw no significant advancements in ball production, although the variety of games increased: early forms of tennis, golf, football, and other modern games emerged during this period. The technology for making balls remained the same as in antiquity: they either used a bladder or a leather bag filled with something light. There were also no strict requirements for the shape of the ball—it could be almost round, elongated, or cylindrical.

Moreover, the ball itself was not the central element of the games. In medieval England, ‘mob football’ was popular. Various forms of this game existed in other parts of Europe, but it achieved cult status in the British Isles. In this game, the ball played a secondary role: the entire village or town (usually the male population) gathered in a field to chase the ball, especially on Shrove Tuesday.iShrove Tuesday is the last day of Carnival before Lent begins in Christian Europe. Sometimes, the ball was kicked, and sometimes, it was thrown by hand, but more often than not, participants fought each other, forgetting about the ball altogether. People could even bring knives to such contests. There are various accounts of runners with balls encountering other runners with knives. The outcome of such encounters was obvious. Additionally, there could be many balls in play during such a game.

Even in 1848, during football competitions at universities in England, athletes were still chasing a ball made from a pig's bladder covered with leather. This ball was easily ripped apart from the strong kicks it received and was far more misshapen than round.

The shape of the actual football changed only after 1838, when American inventor Charles Goodyear learned how to vulcanize rubber from latex. However, he did not immediately turn to making balls—Goodyear's company only produced the first rubber football in 1855. This ball is still preserved in the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, New York, USA.

Seven years later, in 1862, by combining old and new technologies, industrialists created a leather ball with an inflatable rubber bladder, and thus, what would go on to be called a ‘real’ football was born. It had only eighteen leather panels (compared to the modern thirty-two), and it was much less bouncy and durable than the balls made from the latest materials today. This first ball held its shape poorly because the leather would stretch, and the bladder had the annoying tendency to sometimes bulge. Nevertheless, it was already the ball we know today.

However, strangely enough, it was brown in color. When football became a truly mass spectacle, balls were made white for better visibility, and with the advent of black-and-white televisions, the ball was dressed in a black-and-white checkered pattern, which it proudly wears to this day, except on snowy days. On snow-covered fields, orange balls are used.

Меркулов, Я. А. История развития игр с мячом / Я. А. Меркулов, Н. А. Щеглова, Е. А. Сундукова. Юный ученый. — 2022. — № 5 (57)

Fox, John. 2012. The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game. London: HarperCollins.