【推荐1】All human societies play games．Kicking a ball can be found everywhere whether just a ball of cloth，or a skin stuffed with feathers or air．

But complex games and team sports have tended to arise in big civilizations - the higher the cultural level of a society，the greater the complexity of interaction，and hence perhaps the more complex the forms of sport．

This is not always the case．The ancient Greeks，for example，preferred individual not team sports．But in China for well over 2，000 years，people played the game of “kickball” - cuju．The members were often young men from wealthy families though there were also professional kickballers，whom you could stick with in your team as sleepers．

Cuju was played as entertainment at court banquets or the reception of foreign ambassadors．Even emperors played kickball．

As you'd expect in a Confucian society，kickball clubs were keen on the key qualities of mercy and courtesy．A great player was one who showed “the spirit of the game”．The “Ten Essentials of Kickball” included respect for other players，polite behaviors and team spirit．There was to be no ungentlemanly behavior，no dangerous play，and no hogging（独占）the ball．In other words，as we used to say，“play up and play the game．”

What a contrast with the ancient Greek athletics where only victory counted and if that needed gamesmanship，or cruel professional fouls（犯规），then so be it．

As a way of national culture protection，cuju was listed into the first batch of China's intangible cultural heritages（非物质文化遗产）in 2006．

【推荐3】CWA Photo Competition 2021

Calling all photographers!

We've all been spending more time indoors lately. Whether you've been killing time looking back at photos from holidays past, risking taking walking to local sites, or busy working at home, we want to see your best photos on an archaeological theme. Send then to us for your chance to win the first prize in our yearly CWA Photo Competition and have your work shown in the magazine.

The winning image and three runners-up will be featured in CWA. The overall winner will get a free 2-year subscription to the magazine.

Closing date:1 October, 2021

The judge's decision is final, and the results of prize-winners will be announced by 15 October, 2021.

Rules:

▲All photos entered must be done under an individual's name. By submitting images you confirm that you are the copyright holder and creator of the images.

▲Entrants must be 18 or over. The competition is open to all amateur and professional photographers. Amateur and professional entries will not be judged separately.

▲Entrants can submit up to 5 images — please include details of the site of artefact photographed, when each image was taken, and your contact information, including a postal address.

▲Entrants can send your entries by email to cwa@world-archaeology.com with the subject line: CWA PHOTO COMPETITION 2021 or on a disc to CWA PHOTO COMPETITION, Current Publishing, Thames Wors, Church Street, London W4 2PD

【推荐1】Scientists have long believed that Mars was wet around three billion years ago and then lost much of its water. But a new study presents evidence of water activity from about 700 million years ago, posing a new puzzle about Mars and its history for scientists to crack in their future studies.

The new study is based on data from China’s Zhurong rover (“祝融号”火星车), part of the Tianwen-1 mission that touched down on the surface of Mars in May 2021. In particular, the scientists used data the rover gathered during its first 92 Martian days, at its landing site in Utopia Planitia. Yang Liu, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS), and his colleagues analyzed data from three different instruments on Zhurong. Those instruments studied minerals that suggest the presence of a large quantity of liquid water at the site about 700 million years ago, which scientists previously thought was dry.

“This is a very interesting result. We have very little recorded evidence of young liquid water systems on Mars. And for the ones we have, they were usually in the form of salt minerals,” says Dr. Scheller, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology. He explained Zhurong’s instruments spotted water molecules locked away in the rock, which was different from other young liquid water environments that have been observed.

“One of the major things we’ll have to find out and that I look forward to seeing from the Zhurong rover is how extensive these ‘young’ water-bearing minerals are,” Dr. Scheller said. “Are they common or uncommon in these ‘young’ rocks?” Zhurong has now covered about two kilometers during its more than 350 Martian days and has analyzed a range of features on its travels, meaning more new Martian insights are likely still to come from the rover.

NASA has so far sent its Mars rovers to ancient landing sites, dating back to more than 3.7 billion years ago. Zhurong is not just an extra set of wheels on Mars, but a powerful suite of instruments exploring a new, geologically young site to open new windows of opportunity for research on Mars.

【推荐2】Unless you’ve been faithfully bringing reusable shopping bags to the store, you probably grab the plastic bags waiting for customers at the checkout. You’re not alone.

About 100 billion plastic bags are used in the U. S. each year. Unfortunately, single-use plastic bags have serious consequences once our trip to the store is over. Less than 10% of plastic bags used in the U. S. are recycled, leaving the rest to end up in landfills (垃圾填埋场), and polluting soil, oceans and other natural habitats.

To fight pollution and other environmental problems, major companies are taking steps to get rid of the use of plastic shopping bags. If you’re a frequent customer at Walmart, don’t be surprised if you notice the plastic bags disappearing over the next few months. Last summer, Walmart announced its goal to be a zero-waste company — meaning no more plastic bags.

But Walmart has announced its Beyond the Bag, an initiative (倡议) working to explore reusable options and “reimagine” the plastic bag. Target and CVS are also on board as founding partners of Beyond the Bag, and so far, the three brands have invested $15 million to come up with a brand-new bag design.

The initiative also started the Beyond the Bag challenge, giving innovators (创新者) a chance to share their ideas. The challenge ran throughout the summer of 2020, and nine winners from over 450 submissions were selected. From a station supplying reusable bag in-store to a new and improved paper bag, the winning designs cover a lot of bases. Each product now has the chance to be tested with funding from the initiative.

While a final replacement for plastic bags at Walmart has yet to be decided, there’s a more sustainable future on the horizon. And if you want to start reducing your use of plastic bags right now, check out our list of reusable bags to bring on your next shopping trip.

【推荐3】An astronaut crew of private citizens has been launched to the International Space Station(ISS).The launch happened in Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The flight is the first to be organized and operated by a private company involving a completely commercial astronaut crew.

The four-member team will travel to the ISS inside a spacecraft built by American company SpaceX. The crew members are from the private company Axiom Space based in Houston, Texas. The group is led by retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria. The mission is called Ax-1. Lopez-Alegria will be joined by the mission pilot, Larry Conner, a businessman and private pilot from Ohio. The other members of the crew are Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy, a Canadian businessman. Stibbe and Pathy will serve as mission specialists.

NASA says it will cooperate with Axiom mission officials to plan joint activities involving the Axiom team and regular ISS crew members. Currently, there are three American astronauts aboard the ISS, along with a German astronaut and three Russian astronauts.

The launch is being praised as a turning point in the latest expansion of commercial space activities. Such activities have become known in the industry as the low-Earth orbit(轨道) economy, or the “LEO economy”.

The latest mission’s crew might seem similar to private space tourists who recently took space rides that did not reach orbit. The trips aim to fly private citizens to the edge of space and permit them to experience weightlessness and observe Earth.

But Axiom executives(经理、主管领导) say their mission is very different. “We are not space tourists,” Lopez-Alegria says. The Ax-1 team will be carrying equipment and supplies for 26 science and technology experiments. They include research in areas including brain and heart health, cancer and aging.

Axiom’s co-founder and executive chairman, Kam Ghaffarian, says he saw the launch as “the beginning of many beginnings for commercializing low-Earth orbit”. He adds: “We’re like in the early days of the Internet, and we haven’t even imagined all the possibilities, all the capabilities, that we’re going to be providing in space.”