Sports That Aren't In The Olympics, But Should Be

The Olympics is just around the corner now, and everyone seems to be overexcited about Team GB's "Chances of Success". By this, I assume they mean our initially promising rounds, followed by disappointing placements of 4th and below in almost all events.

In case that prospect gets you down, here are some awesome sports, ancient and modern, that we don't hold as Olympic games, but perhaps we should do.

The Pankration

First up: pankration, a kind of ancient Greek UFC. It was a cross between  boxing and wrestling, where the only moves not allowed were biting and gouging your opponents eyes. As with all proper sports, pankration was supposedly invented by demi-gods. Theseus used his awesome pankration skills to defeat the Minotaur, and Heracles killed the Nemean Lion in much the same way. It probably arose sometime in the 7th century BC.

This is from a handy vase painting.

Pankration was more than just a wrestling competition however. Winners of the pankration were equivalent to modern day sporting heroes, and several of them passed into legend. Pankration was also used asn an essential part of hoplite training by the Spartans and later the Macedonian army.

The pankration continued to be popular after the conquest by Rome, and was a part of the Olympic games for about 1000 years, making it far more traditional than many of the sports we currently hold.


Chariot Racing

Switching to the Hippodrome, the Romans give us chariot racing. Obviously they weren't the only people in the ancient world to use chariots (in fact, they stopped using them for war in the Republic; when invading Britain in the 1st century BC, Caesar was amused that the Britons fielded chariots against him). However the Roman tradition is one of the better understood chariot racing traditions.

To give you some idea of the violence of a chariot race, here's a clip from Ben Hur in dazzling technicolour. The race itself starts around the two minute mark.

And then, I found a Yakety Sax version. Unfortunately, I do not have a transcript for this video.
 
At the Hippodrome in Rome, there were several major teams, all wearing specific colours (not unlike football teams). They would often compete for the services of a particularly skilled driver. Each colour often fielded more than one team per race. These teams would then work together to maximise the chances of a win for their colours. Each colour would also have a staunch following, who often wore the colour to races to show their support. It wasn't uncommon for violence to break out between different groups of supporters. I like to think of Roman chariot racing as a proto-Formula 1.


Gloucester Cheese Rolling

This is not an ancient sport. It might not even be a sport, but it looks horrifying, and totally amazing. All that happens is that a round cheese is thrown down a steep hill, and people chase after it. That's all.

Yes, the still from that video is a man in a mankini. I'm afraid I can't help that. No transcript is required for this video, as all that happens is people chasing cheese downhill.

But just look at their passion! This would also be excellent for our Olympics as all reasonable athletes would take one look at the hill and go "Err.... No, thanks, but I won't be entering this race", and we'd take gold every time.


The Great Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race

 I can't really believe this one exists, but it's on the internet, so it must do, right? Anyway, this one is supposedly the brain child of Simon Thackery, one of the organisers of The Shed in Malton.

Pretty much exactly as mad as it sounds: they make giant Yorkshire puddings, bake them, varnish them with yacht varnish and away you go.

I don't know who this child is, but he's having a better childhood than I did. 

So, when Team GB have once again failed to live up to the hype, remember. We might have stood a bit of a chance if they'd included these sports. Maybe. 

2012: Mayans Predict End of World?

In honour of the new year, I thought we could turn to a subject of (one, extremely poor) film, and many conspiracy theories. Did the Mayans predict the end of the world, and is it going to happen?


What is the Mayan Calendar?

The Mayans were an extremely well developed society, who have dates going back to 3114BC (The starting date of the Mayan calendar; almost certainly a mythical founding event), and were subjugated by the Spanish in 1697.They had an extensive writing system, and were numerals that included the concept of zero (which is more than the Romans ever managed). Unsurprisingly, the Mayans had a system of recording dates: in other words a calendar. This was an altered version of the earlier calendars of the Olmecs. Example picture below:

Mayan numerals were deciphered in the late 19th/ early 20th century (It was a long process). The conversion of Mayan dates to Julian ones (ours) that I and most researchers use is the GMT, developed in the mid 20th century.

The calendar worked on several different cycles. There was a 260 day count (the Tzolkin), which combined with a roughly 365 day count (the Haab). These were made up of combinations of 20 and 13 day cycles. When combined, the Haab and Tzolkin make up a synchronised cycle called the Calendar Round, lasting 52 Haabs (c. 52 years) Since the calendar round repeats approximately once in a person's lifespan, there needed to be another calendar to represent long, or historical time. This is the famed Long Count, that allegedly predicts the end of the world. So how did it work?


Long Count

Unlike the Calendar Round, the long count is non-repeating. It identifies days by their number after the mythical founding date: August 11, 3114 BC, in the Western calendar. It uses a base 20 numbering system, thus: 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and so on. The third digit in this sequence rolls over to 0 at 18, rather than 20. Long Count dates are usually found on buildings and inscriptions, identifying dates of buildings or significant events, such as the reign of a new monarch.

The second digit on a long count date is the K'atun, equal to 19.7 solar years. A Baktun is 20 K'atun cycles, or 394.6 years. The 13th Baktun is supposed to end on the 21st December 2012, which is why this date supposedly is the end of the world. However, reaching the end of a Baktun was usually considered an auspicious event, to be celebrated with feasting (as I vaguely remember the Millennium being).


What does all this mean for the 'prediction'?

Well, firstly, it's not really a prediction. There is a tradition of 'ages' in Mayan culture. The time from their founding date onwards is the Fourth World (the first three are unsuccessful test-runs). The previous world allegedly lasted for 13 Baktuns, and it is on this premise that this world will also end after 13 Baktuns. However, if that was a failed world, shouldn't our, (successful) world last much longer? Most of the scholarship on the subject from the 60s onward dismisses these 'end of the world' claims. The only people still making them are writers for the Daily Mail (what sells better than end-of-the-world-stories? Well, okay, celebrity nudity probably does), and websites like this.

If you'll care to have a look at this website (and be warned, you need a pretty strong stomach for bullshit), you'll see that it's twisted quite a lot of the information. I can't claim to be a physicist, but based on the validity of their claims about the Mayan world, I'm happy to accept that their 'scientific' information is equally flawed.


Is the world going to end?

No. Far more interesting is the question of why we think the world is going to end because of this calendar. The Mayans seem to have thought in cyclical time, and the fact that there were worlds before the current one, means they are likely to have been quite open to the possibility of another world after this one. Western Christian tradition, however, predicts the end of the world in the Bible, and for hundreds of years this was accepted without question: for western traditions it's not a question of if the world will end, but when.

For the Mayans, this was probably just a chance to celebrate living to see a particularly interesting but insignificant calendar event, like our Millennium.


Know anything about the dodgy science on that website? Let me know! And happy new year, all.