Hule (olli, ulli) — the American elastomer described in Spanish print before Europe had a word for it

Long before Europe had a word for an elastic solid, Spanish books described one. Oviedo wrote in the 1530s that these balls bounce, again and again, by themselves; Molina's 1571 Mexico vocabulary glosses Nahuatl ulli with a Taino word for the game; Ximénez's 1615 Mexico imprint gives the tree, the cut in the bark and the Spanish corruption "vle", ancestor of hule. Excavation dates the game to 1374 BCE. The cost stands in the same chapters.