The Ballgame

The Indians of Mesoamerica have engaged in some sort of contest using a rubber ball for more than 2,000 years. Cortez brought teams back to Europe in 1528 and introduced the bounce to European athletics, since prior to that time balls were made of leather or wood.

Not much is known about the rules of the Classic Mayan game, but similar games were being played at the time of the conquest. We can infer a lot from eyewitness accounts and from the interpretations of classic art depicting ball players in protective clothing and action poses. The game was played with 1 to 4 players on a team. Points were scored by making contact with a marker, a stone ring located on the sides of the ball court. The contestants took positions like modern soccer players, controlling the ball with their arms, torso, and legs.

Since the ball, in most cases, was made of solid rubber and varied in size from 8 cm. to 30 cm. in diameter, the ball players were heavily padded.

Horse shoe shaped yokes, made of wicker or other reed fibers, were worn around the layers midsection, while their thighs and arms were protected by thick cloth pads. The ball is said to weight up to 8 pounds, so a blow to the head was often fatal; better perhaps than what awaited the members of the losing team.

Captured kings and nobles were forced to compete before being sacrificed. It was thought for many years that sacrifice was brought to the Mayan games by outside influences, namely the warlike Toltecs who settled at Chichen Itza. Modern archeologists now believe that death and sacrifice was the ultimate result for combatants from Classic times through to the conquest, thus dispelling the myth of the gentle Maya, who had ritual sacrifice thrust upon them by invaders.

The ball court found throughout Maya territories was built like a modern football stadium. Long and narrow, with sloping sides, sometimes used as bleachers, other times as part of the field of play. Decorated rings set high in the walls have provided us with some idea of how the game was played. The size of these courts varies from half the size of a tennis court to the football sized great ball court at Chichen Itza. (Whose unusual acoustics allow one to carry on a conversation at normal voice levels with someone at the far end of the court!) The location of these courts near the center of the ceremonial centers may indicate the importance placed on the ball game. Many cities have more than one court. At El Tajin in Veracruz there are 11 ball courts! Some believe they held the Pre- Columbian version of the World Cup there! It may also show that the game was played for pure fun in the neighborhoods. A good way to keep the kids off the sac-be! (Sac-be's are the raised roads that connected most Mayan cities.)

In the Popol Vuh, the 'Book of Life', written by the post classic Maya of the Guatemalan Highlands, the ballgame plays an important role. The 'Hero Twins' later known as the Sun and Venus, defeat the Lords of Death by outwitting them and displaying their skill at pok-ta-pok, the name given the game.

So readers, as is so often the case with Classic Maya history, we know so little and theorize so much. Is the padded figure painted on a 7th century bowl really that of a ball player? A Mayan caretaker at the ruins of Copan in Honduras told me that the magnificent stelae (tree-stone) in the Great Plaza were statues of ball players, immortalized in an ancient Hall of Fame!! Quien sabe?!!

by Don Lorenzo

SOURCES
'The Blood of Kings' - Schele & Miller
'A First of Kings' - Schele & Miller
'Popol Vuh' - Translation by Ted Lock
'Ancient Maya Civilization' - Hammond