Rubber balls and the Mesoamerican ballgame
c. 1,600 BCENotable
Solid rubber balls made from latex at El Manati in Mexico are the oldest known. The ballgame they enabled became a central ritual sport across Mesoamerica.
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Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Modern humans leave Africa → Humans reach the Americas → Rubber balls and the Mesoamerican ballgame
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