If someone said to you “This is a sport that involves a small round ball being sent flying across a large arena and the aim of the game is to get the ball through an equally small hoop”, what would you imagine?
This is exactly how our guide at Chichen Itza described the Mesoamerican ball game while standing outside the ruins of the sporting arena. We had seen the famous pyramid and a number of other impressive structures but as our guide explained the sporting rules all we were able to see were some half-ruined walls. Naturally, after hearing the description above, I began see in my mind’s eye Mayan warriors dressed in full feathered regalia batting a quaffle around with a broomstick. What else could a child of the Harry Potter generation possibly imagine?!
When we eventually stepped into the arena it turned out I wasn’t too far off. From each of the two long walls protruded a small stone hoop, a bit like a basketball hoop turned on its side. Unfortunately, there were no broomsticks involved. The tennis sized ball had to be kept in the air between two competing teams by the warriors hitting it off their shoulders, forearms, knees and hips. This fulfilled the first function of the game – to show off the strength and agility of the community’s army and warn any rival Mayan village.
The second reason it was played was simply for entertainment. Local people would crowd on top of the walls of the arena (much like the quidditch stadium at Hogwarts) and race back to celebrate in the city after the ball had passed through the hoop, signalling the end of a game which could last for days.
The third reason for playing the Mesoamerican ball game is the most interesting but perhaps not for the faint hearted. War between communities was often settled in the ball arena. For the Mayans war was a sacred event and more concerned with capturing the best warriors than killing. When a sacrifice was needed the strongest prisoner would be chosen to have his heart ripped out and offered, still beating, to the sun, god of war. A similar fate met the losing team of the ball game. A member of the team would step forward to face the winning player who had successfully passed the ball through the hoop. At this point the victor had a couple of options; he could let the loser go free to live in ultimate shame or he could sever his opponents head showing his own power while also making his enemy a hero in the community. It was usually the latter that was chosen and this is depicted in carvings still visible all around the arena.
The title of this post doesn’t really do justice to the intelligence of the Mayans, from the perfect engineering of their buildings to their sound understanding of the planets and their perfect calendar, writing and mathematics systems. Though much of the knowledge they possessed was lost with colonisation, the Mayan community are now being given a lot of support to preserve what does remain, including their language and true stories from their culture such as this one.
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Tall Tales 