The Popul Vuh, the Mayan equivalent of the Book of Genesis, describes a religious and sacred ball game that pits good against evil and revolves around human sacrifice, fertility and regeneration. Sixteenth-century Spanish invaders reported that the ball game also involved gambling for land, slaves and other valuables. These high-stakes games have no equivalent in modern society. Versions of the game in which players hit a small rubber ball with a bat or stick or slammed the balls with their hips were played from southern Arizona to northern South America. The two were discussing the ball game one day when they realized that the properties required for the balls could not have resulted from the use of latex alone.
Natural latex is a sticky, unworkable liquid that dries to a brittle solid.
They investigated how the people of Mesoamerica made large, resilient bouncy balls more than 3,000 years before vulcanized rubber was invented. In the process, Mr. Tarkanian became one of a handful of undergraduates to have co-authored articles in the prestigious journal Science. A process similar to his was patented in England in 1843. But Professor Hosler and Mr. Tarkanian's initial examination of 16th-century documents, archaeological reports and rubber artifacts at Harvard University's Peabody Museum made clear that rubber artifacts were used throughout ancient Mesoamerica. At the museum, they identified a number of ancient hollow rubber figurines, a band made from rubber that secured a stone axe head to its wooden handle and numerous small rubber balls.