The Mayan Ball Game
When I was 7 or 8 years old, my parents got me a collection of books, titled "Childcraft". It was a children's version of encyclopedia containing a range of topics from science to world history and short stories and poetry. I read the sixteen books cover to cover multiple times, and relished reading the stories for which I knew the lines by heart.
While the Mayans are known for their "prophetic" calendar, the Mayan ball game continues to fascinate me for a variety of reasons - First, the similarity of the game, invented sometime in the Preclassical Period (2000 BC-250 AD) and made popular in the Classical Period (250-950 AD), to many modern day sports like Volleyball, Soccer, and especially Sepak takraw, the native "kick volleyball" sport of Southeast Asian countries.
Second, the unnaturally difficult rules - It involved two teams of three players each, trying to hit a rubber ball through one of the rings as shown here -
What's so difficult about this, you may ask. They had to do it without the help of their hands, and the rubber ball weighed anywhere between 1 and 3 kilograms, and around 30 cm in diameter. One could easily break their bones, trying to hit this huge object with their hips, elbows, thighs and shoulders.
But the most intriguing and saddening part of this sport, is what awaited the losing team. You must have guessed it by now.
To the Mayans, the game was not just a sport but part of a religious ceremony and it told of the fight between good and evil. While the winners of the game received trophies, the losing team captain, or sometimes, the entire team, were sacrificed to the Gods. There are also stone carvings of "Tzompantli", which are skull racks where severed heads are displayed, near the ball courts, indicating the gruesome nature of this game.
Other similarities to modern day games, include drawing huge numbers of viewers and gambling on the potential winning team.
While it is disquieting to read about the practices resorted to by the people of Ancient Mesoamerica, we can at least be glad that modern day sports don't allow for any such macabre to be on our television screens over the weekend :)
Last week, out of the blue, I had a #tbt moment and one particular story I had read came back to me, but not entirely. I was desperate to read it again but all I could remember were two things - the color illustration in the Childcraft book and some minute details of the historical story.
After struggling to find an online version, I inconvenienced my mother early in the morning, to rummage through the bookshelf and find that particular volume - No.13 Exploring the past. Luckily, she found it quickly, and as she turned the pages one by one, my excitement increased until finally, that exact illustration of a guy jumping with his hands outstretched, appeared. There it was - The Mayan Ball Game.
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| That moment! |
While the Mayans are known for their "prophetic" calendar, the Mayan ball game continues to fascinate me for a variety of reasons - First, the similarity of the game, invented sometime in the Preclassical Period (2000 BC-250 AD) and made popular in the Classical Period (250-950 AD), to many modern day sports like Volleyball, Soccer, and especially Sepak takraw, the native "kick volleyball" sport of Southeast Asian countries.
Second, the unnaturally difficult rules - It involved two teams of three players each, trying to hit a rubber ball through one of the rings as shown here -
What's so difficult about this, you may ask. They had to do it without the help of their hands, and the rubber ball weighed anywhere between 1 and 3 kilograms, and around 30 cm in diameter. One could easily break their bones, trying to hit this huge object with their hips, elbows, thighs and shoulders.
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| DeviantArt \o/ |
But the most intriguing and saddening part of this sport, is what awaited the losing team. You must have guessed it by now.
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| Artwork - Abhishek Desikan |
To the Mayans, the game was not just a sport but part of a religious ceremony and it told of the fight between good and evil. While the winners of the game received trophies, the losing team captain, or sometimes, the entire team, were sacrificed to the Gods. There are also stone carvings of "Tzompantli", which are skull racks where severed heads are displayed, near the ball courts, indicating the gruesome nature of this game.
Other similarities to modern day games, include drawing huge numbers of viewers and gambling on the potential winning team.
While it is disquieting to read about the practices resorted to by the people of Ancient Mesoamerica, we can at least be glad that modern day sports don't allow for any such macabre to be on our television screens over the weekend :)
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