Is Your Culture at Risk of Extinction? How Sports Can Help Us Remain Current

Sept. 6, 2016 - PRLog -- Have you ever watched a game of bull-leaping? You know, the sporting event where girls (painted white) grip the horns of a bull while trying to catch the boys (painted red) who are acrobatically leaping over the bull. What about the Mexico-based sport ōllamaliztli? It's similar to racquetball expect it ends with a player being sacrificed on the temple's altar.

These sports amongst hundreds of others no longer exist. In Minoan Crete and Aztecan Mexico, respectively, they were a cornerstone of their culture, but an inability to remain current expunged them to the point where today historians are only scarcely aware of their existence and no one has the knowledge necessary to accurately reenact the game.

While there is no need to long for the days of ritualistically executing athletes, it is worth considering how we can learn from these all-but-forgotten sports to ensure that our organizations and well-constructed cultures avoid disappearing into obscurity.

   The Olympics is one of the few internationally embraced sporting events. People like to taut its long, illustrious history, but besides the name and four year frequency, it bares little resemblance to its Greek origins. Until it was revived in the 1890s...

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