Sports, Gambling, And Government : America 's First Social Compact

Throughout the humanities course, I have been intrigued by a vast amount of information on different cultures. However, there was a particular section that truly caught my attention, and has piqued an interest in me that has caused me to do my own research aside from this paper. The culture of the Mayas, and the Aztecs has been extremely fundamental in understanding my ancestry, being that I am Mexican American. I took an interest in their beautiful architecture, their ritualistic and sacrificial religious practices, as well as their history and how they began. Throughout this paper I will outline the similarities and differences of these two cultures, as well as articulate an understanding of the humanity disciplines outlined above.

Within the Mayan empire was a highly religious culture. The religion of the Mayas was in everything. Even something as simple as a ball game, depicted in a stone carving, had deep religious meaning. Whichever team lost this game would be sacrificed to the gods.

Mesoamerica have been connected the North and South America culturally and geographically throughout the history. Mesoamerican culture and aspects heavily influenced southwestern United States, being the frontier borderline between North America and Mesoamerica. It is very important to study the relationship between the Mesoamerica and American Southwest because American Southwest contains various elements of Mesoamerican culture and this provides fundamental information about human behaviors, history, interactions, and tradition in America. Our group has selected Agriculture, Architecture, Religion, and Trade as our categories to analyze the relationship between American southwest and Mesoamerica. Fair trade, we will focus on scarlet macaws and how it got traded from Mesoamerica in the American southwest and its significance. For architecture, we will compare the ball courts of Hohokam and that of Mesoamerica. Significance of ball courts and how it got introduced into the American southwest from Mesoamerica will be discussed as well. Religion will be analyzed by focusing on the cosmological beliefs of both groups and the similarities and differences between Mesoamerican cosmology and American southwest cosmology.

“Both the Aztecs and the Mayans had a version of the game of basketball. The Mayans played the first basketball game around 500 years ago, although their ball was a human skull of a conquered foe!” (Faurschou, “History of basketball”). Aspects of the games included today’s basketball, American football, and

When people think of sports, some of the first things that come to mind are ball games such as football and basketball, cheerleaders, and expensive halftime shows. We rarely think about the origins of these organized games, which date back thousands of years to the subtropical regions of Central America. Today’s sports fans have nothing on the Mayans. The Mesoamerican Ball Game is the oldest known sport in the Americas. It was a ritual, political and social activity that involved the whole community. The basic form “consisted of two parallel mounds separated by a playing field, but the ball court evolved and took on an important variation with end zones forming an I shape” (Foster, 2002, p.233). These structures had sloping walls and benches, where

What happened to the Mayan civilization before it mysteriously collapsed is still a mystery, but heart-stopping achievements were made. Throughout 3000 years the Native tribe of the Maya inhabited México, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras until the Spanish arrived. They were so secluded from anyone else, that they could not learn information from other tribes and they came up with all ideas themselves.(BGE) Trade routes, the creation of beautiful cities, establishing the number system and developing three calendars we all breathtaking achievements accomplished by the Mayan culture. Using scale, effort, genius, and significance four achievements will be argued about which was the most remarkable. Obviously the development

. Capital at Cuzco, which had as many as three hundred thousand people in the late fifteenth century

Gambling is a common practice throughout human history, one that appeals to the individual’s desire for gain and offers the thrill of risk or uncertainty. Sports gambling is the “wagering of money or other items of value on the outcome of a sporting event, dependent either wholly or in part on chance” (Thompson, 2008, p. 1). Sports gambling generates billions of dollars annually, with large events like the Super Bowl or World Series alone able to generate wagers in the billions of dollars. This research will explore the arguments of those who oppose sports gambling and those who support it in order to answer the question: Should sports gambling be legalized?

Rojas details the role of geopolitics and Mesoamerican political tradition in the demise of the Mexica and includes maps of Aztec and Spanish conquest in the Aztec region. This offers insight into how the Spanish accomplished colonization and why the indigenous accepted them as their rulers, showing the content’s value. Rojas’s failure to focus on the importance of the extensive tributary system central to the capital’s political power and ultimate demise is the content’s

In the 16th century Spaniards Herman Cortes and Christopher Columbus set out on endeavoring journeys in search of new worlds. Christopher Columbus encountered, in the Caribbean islands, a group of extremely simplistic Native Americans. Herman Cortes however encountered a much more advanced Native American group in Meso America; we formally know this area to be Mexico. In my essay I will be comparing and contrasting several aspects between both of these Native American Civilizations including sophistication, technology, housing, weapons, religion and their reaction to the Spaniards. Letters written by Columbus and Cortes will be used to make these comparisons.

Murals found at a dig site in Teotihuacan suggests that at one point, this sport was played with wooden sticks, but the most common played method of the game used no extra equipment; players kept the ball in play using their hips. While the game play varied from city to city, the game rules of play were basically the same throughout Mesoamerica of that era. The game was played in large stone courts and informally on fields in major Mesoamerican cities. Proof shows that Aztec games were eventually played with stone hoops where players could score points by hitting the hoop with the ball or win the game outright by getting the ball through the hoop.

Massive temples hidden in the jungles of the Yucatan, mysterious stone stelas, and cryptic calendars eluding to advanced knowledge of the stars and mathematics are just some of the artifacts originating from the “Classic Maya” period (200 CE-900 CE). However, these popular items should not be the only defining characteristics of a society that dominated the Mesoamerican region for nearly a millennia. Dynastic lines, similar to those found in European houses, were important elements during this period in places like Palenque, Tikal, and Calakmul. Additionally, the Maya experienced violent and consistent warfare between localized powers and the backbone of their society, agriculture, suffered through several multi-year droughts. These factors

Robert Kiyosaki once said, “Successful people take big risks knowing they might fall hard but they might succeed more than they ever dreamed.” This man is a billionaire that hit the jackpot, while gambling. He now owns eleven different businesses and he is worth over eighty million dollars. If someone could learn how to astute, they could live like him too. The articles, The Legalized Gambling Debate, Sports Betting Should be Legal, and Should Sports Gambling be Legal?, all attribute thought to this suggestion. Gambling is a feasible business as it provides revenue, sponsors education, and inspires gamblers.

The breathtaking splendor of ornate cites, the beautifully constructed grand temples, and the ingeniously developed and advanced caledretics, mathematics, and astronomy easily mark one of the most interesting and prosperous periods in Latin American history. Over period spanning approximately six centuries, the Maya of Central America reached artistic and intellectual heights that no other group in the New World had seen

This book can be a great source of knowledge for the anthropology readers to understand the civilization of Indian cultures and societies along with the Spanish policies and rules and colonization. The book satisfies and succeeds to describe the debate between Spanish Intellectuals over the nature of Indians. This book showed how Spanish educated the uncivilized Indians and development over cultures. Though padgens seems to have less knowledge about indian cultures and language, he was able to demonstrate debate between different anthropologists which makes reader clear about cultural change. It is unsatisfying when it discusses the nature of Mesoamerican and South American Indian societies. The relation between them about origins of comparative ethnology was also not satisfactory. Padgen didn’t discuss the issue like the connection between Las casa, Acosta and the scantily treated Lafitau connected to later ethnologists such as sir Henry Maine, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor or lewis Henry