Ulama Traditional Ballgame Sinaloa

Ulama is a descendant of the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame, played continuously in a handful of Sinaloa communities and regarded as one of the oldest continuously played sports in the world, using a solid rubber ball whose predecessors date back roughly 3,600 years. Suppressed after the Spanish conquest for its religious associations, the game survived specifically in Sinaloa, where Spanish influence was historically weaker, and today experiences a modest organized revival through associations in Mexico, the United States and Belize.

Archaeologists have found rubber balls in Mesoamerica dating to roughly 1600 BC, ballgamer figurines from around 1200 BC, and evidence of nearly 1,500 ancient ball courts spread across a region stretching from modern Mexico to El Salvador.