Sports and Games of the Ancients

Sports and Games of the Ancients PDF Author: Steve Craig
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Discusses sports and games from mankind's earliest days.

Sports and Games of the Ancients

Sports and Games of the Ancients PDF Author: Steve Craig
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
Discusses sports and games from mankind's earliest days.

Sports and Games of the Ancients

Sports and Games of the Ancients PDF Author: Steve Craig
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN: 9780313361203
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Based on reports from 19th century explorers, museum artifacts, and other historical documents, the rules, equipment, and diagrams as they are currently understood are provided here for readers, along with suggestions for adapting these sports and games for modern times. Sports enthusiasts and students will find this volume a valuable resource for discovering the earliest beginnings of our modern-day sports. Divided according to seven geopolitical regions of the world, Sports and Games of the Ancients describes the sports, games, and play of our earliest ancestors. Their need for survival in often hostile conditions enable them to develop skills such as long distance running or archery, and these skills were then practiced in friendly competitions that evolved into our modern-day marathons and Olympic events. Covering such games as Africa's mancala and senet, the martial arts of Asia, the log run and Tejo of Latin America, and the boomerang and surfing of Oceania, this volume provides a solid picture of the sports and games of our ancient ancestors.

Combat Sports in the Ancient World

Combat Sports in the Ancient World PDF Author: Michael B. Poliakoff
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300063127
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
A comprehensive study of the practice of combat sports in the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome and the Near East.

Athletics and Games of the Ancient Greeks

Athletics and Games of the Ancient Greeks PDF Author: Edward M. Plummer
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 77

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Book Description
In Athletics and Games of the Ancient Greeks, Plummer examines ancient Greek exercise, Olympics, sports, and games. Edward M. Plummer was a highly accomplished ear surgeon in early 20th century Massachusetts. "Bodily exercise was not an irksome task, but an agreeable pastime. The ancient Hellenes were therefore a very happy people, the ends that they sought to attain prescribed tasks that were congenial with their national temperament."

Ringside

Ringside PDF Author: Scott Beekman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313026785
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Despite its status as one of the oldest and most enduringly popular sports in history, wrestling has been pushed to the background of the current American sports scene. Most people today would have a hard time even considering wrestling (with some of its modern theatrics) in the same terms as track and field or boxing. But until the 1920s, wrestling stood as a legitimate professional sport in this country, and a widely practiced amateur one as well. Its past respectability may not have endured, but the advent of cable television in the 1980s offered the sport a renewed opportunity to play a determining role in American popular culture. This opportunity was not wasted, and wrestlers now assume places in politics and film at the highest levels. Ringside, the first work to fully examine the history of professional wrestling in this country, provides an illuminating and colorful account of all of the various athletes, entertainers, businessmen, and national outlooks that have determined wrestling's erratic route through American history. This chronological work begins with a brief account of wrestling's global history, and then proceeds to investigate the sport's growth as a specifically American institution. Wrestling has continued to survive in the face of technological developments, scandals, public ridicule, and a lack of centralized control, and today this supremely adaptable entertainment form represents, in sum, an international industry capable of attracting enormous television and pay-per-view audiences, along with massive amounts of advertising and merchandizing revenue. Ringside focuses on the business of wrestling as well as on the performers and their in-ring antics, and offers readers a fully nuanced examination of the development of professional wrestling in America.

Game Design Theory

Game Design Theory PDF Author: Keith Burgun
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1466554207
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Despite the proliferation of video games in the twenty-first century, the theory of game design is largely underdeveloped, leaving designers on their own to understand what games really are. Helping you produce better games, Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games presents a bold new path for analyzing and designing games. The author offers a radical yet reasoned way of thinking about games and provides a holistic solution to understanding the difference between games and other types of interactive systems. He clearly details the definitions, concepts, and methods that form the fundamentals of this philosophy. He also uses the philosophy to analyze the history of games and modern trends as well as to design games. Providing a robust, useful philosophy for game design, this book gives you real answers about what games are and how they work. Through this paradigm, you will be better equipped to create fun games.

Weird Sports and Wacky Games around the World

Weird Sports and Wacky Games around the World PDF Author: Victoria R. Williams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1610696409
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
With hundreds of books dedicated to conventional sports and activities, this encyclopedia on the weirdest and wackiest games offers a fresh and entertaining read for any audience. Weird Sports and Wacky Games around the World: From Buzkashi to Zorbing focuses on what many would consider abnormal activities from across the globe. Spanning subjects that include individual games, team sports, games for men and women, and contests involving animal competitors, there is something for every reader. Whether researching a particular country or region's traditions or wanting an interesting read for pleasure, this book offers an array of uses and benefits. Though the book focuses on games and sporting activities, the examination of these topics gives readers insight into unfamiliar places and peoples through their recreation—an essential part of the human experience that occurs in all cultures. Such activities are not only embedded in everyday life but also indelibly interconnected with social customs, war, politics, commerce, education, and national identity, making the whimsical topic of the book an appealing gateway to insightful, highly relevant information.

Sport in Ancient Times

Sport in Ancient Times PDF Author: Nigel B. Crowther
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313051240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Crowther offers a fascinating look at the role of sport as practiced in several important civilizations in the ancient world. He not only probes the games themselves, but explores the ways in which athletics figured into cultural arenas that extended beyond physical prowess to military associations, rituals, status, and politics. Sport in Ancient Times has four distinct parts: the Prehistoric Age, historic Greece, ancient Italy, and the Byzantine Empire. Beginning with the earliest civilizations, Crowther examines the military and recreational aspects of sports in prehistoric Egypt, with brief references to other river-valley cultures in Sumeria, Mesopotamia, and Persia. He looks at the rituals of Cretan bull-leaping and boxing in the Bronze Age, the high status of sports in Mycenaean Greece, and the funeral games in the Trojan War as described by the epic poet Homer. In what he terms the historic period, Crowther examines the significance of the ancient Olympic Games, the events of Greek athletics, and the attitude of other civilizations (notably Rome) towards them. He attempts to discover to what extent the Romans believed in the famous ideal of Juvenal, a sound mind in a sound body, and discusses the significance of the famous Baths not only for sport, but also for culture and society. He likewise explores the Roman emphasis on spectator sports and the use of gladiatorial contests and chariot racing for political purposes (the concept of bread and games). The section on the Byzantine Empire focuses, notably, on chariot racing and the riots at sporting contests—riots reminiscent of crowd violence in modern sports such as soccer. Crowther closes with perspectives that bring to life some of the issues revealed in previous chapters. These include a comparison of the social status and significance of a famous Olympic athlete (Milo), a Roman gladiator (Hermes), and a Byzantine chariot racer (Porphyrius). He also addresses the changing role of women in sports in antiquity. Women were prominent in sport in Egypt, for example, but almost entirely absent from the ancient Olympic Games. The final chapter discusses team sports and ball games. Although these were comparatively rare in the ancient world, one may see in those that did exist the forerunners of modern football and hockey.

Athletics and Philosophy in the Ancient World

Athletics and Philosophy in the Ancient World PDF Author: Heather L. Reid
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317984951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This book examines the relationship between athletics and philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome focused on the connection between athleticism and virtue. It begins by observing that the link between athleticism and virtue is older than sport, reaching back to the athletic feats of kings and pharaohs in early Egypt and Mesopotamia. It then traces the role of athletics and the Olympic Games in transforming the idea of aristocracy as something acquired by birth to something that can be trained. This idea of training virtue through the techniques and practice of athletics is examined in relation to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Then Roman spectacles such as chariot racing and gladiator games are studied in light of the philosophy of Lucretius, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. The concluding chapter connects the book’s ancient observations with contemporary issues such as the use of athletes as role models, the relationship between money and corruption, the relative worth of participation and spectatorship, and the role of females in sport. The author argues that there is a strong link between sport and philosophy in the ancient world, calling them offspring of common parents: concern about virtue and the spirit of free enquiry. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Ethics and Sport.

The Victor's Crown

The Victor's Crown PDF Author: David Potter
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199842736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
Details the role of sports in the classical world from early Greece through the late Roman and early Byzantine empires.