The Renaissance was a period of extraordinary spirit and development that marked a critical stage in the history of sports and games. In Europe the development of a moneyed economy and more refined methods of timekeeping ushered in a new era of leisure and leisure-activity, in which the old tradition of the Shrove Tuesday Football match deepened in the cultural consciousness. In Asia, Sumo's gradual codification began to develop alongside ancestors of the modern game of hackey-sack. In North and South America, European explorers saw how traditional team sports and games such as lacrosse and pelota could serve as an integrating and uniting phenomenon. Series editor Andrew Leibs provides narrative chapters on Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North America, and Oceania, each of which shows how modern-day form of recreation evolved during the Renaissance. In addition, readers will learn how to play games that had been previously lost to history. This volume is the latest installment in the Sports and Games Through History series. Each geographically arranged chapter describes sports, games, and rituals of play, along with descriptions on equipment and instructions for making or adapting game pieces.

Identifies sports, games, and play from cultures around the world that were invented and played during medieval times.

Based on reports from 19th century explorers, museum artifacts, and other historical documents, the rules, equipment, and diagrams as they are currently understood are provided here for readers, along with suggestions for adapting these sports and games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.

During the African American cultural resurgence of the 1920s and 1930s, professional athletes shared the spotlight with artists and intellectuals. Negro League baseball teams played in New York City's major-league stadiums and basketball clubs shared the bill with jazz bands at late night casinos. Yet sports rarely appear in the literature on the Harlem Renaissance. Although the black intelligentsia largely dismissed the popularity of sports, the press celebrated athletics as a means to participate in the debates of the day. A few prominent writers, such as Claude McKay and James Weldon Johnson, used sports in distinctive ways to communicate their vision of the Renaissance. Meanwhile, the writers of the Harlem press promoted sports with community consciousness, insightful analysis and a playful love of language, and argued for their importance in the fight for racial equality.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, games were not an idle pastime, but were in fact important tools for exploring, transmitting, enhancing, subverting, and challenging social practices and their rules. Their study, through both visual and material sources, offers a unique insight into medieval and early modern gaming culture, shedding light not only on why, where, when, with whom and in what conditions and circumstances people played games, but also on the variety of interpretations that they had of games and play. Representations of games, and of artefacts associated with games, also often served to communicate complex ideas on topics that ranged from war to love, and from politics to theology.00This volume offers a particular focus onto the type of games that required little or no physical exertion and that, consequently, all people could enjoy, regardless of age, gender, status, occupation, or religion. The representations and artefacts discussed here by contributors, who come from varied disciplines including history, literary studies, art history, and archaeology, cover a wide geographical and chronological range, from Spain to Scandinavia to the Ottoman Turkey and from the early medieval period to the seventeenth century and beyond. Far from offering the ?last word? on the subject, it is hoped that this volume will encourage further studies.

An exploration of the history of a mathematical board game played in medieval and Renaissance Europe

Discover 5 great Renaissance artists as you play 2 fun card games: Go Fish and a new version of Concentration. Collect 6 works of art by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Fra Angelico, and Botticelli as you play. Learn the story behind each painting in the 76-page full-color book that comes with the game.