Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ancient Chinese Football

2011; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-90-6704-808-8_1

2215-003X

Bram Cohen,

Sports, Gender, and Society

The very first sources that refer to kicking against a ball come to us from the Chinese. At the time of the Western Han dynasty (206 BC–24 AD), Liu Xiang wrote his Analects of Tactics, in which he described zu-gu, the football of the Chinese people. For a long time, it was thought that zu-gu (zu means 'shooting with the foot'; gu means 'ball') was played from around 500 BC on. But archaeologists have not remained idle. Numerous historical writings, inscriptions and remains have been found from the period predating the fifth century BC. These sources show that the Chinese were playing football nearly 5000 years ago.