Research has shown that the teams had between two and five players, depending on the size of the playing field. It is believed that the way to win in the early days was to keep the ball from falling to the ground.
However, the Maya ball game evolved with the implementation of hoops in the courts through which the ball had to pass in order to score points. The ball was mainly made of rubber, but it was hardened through a vulcanization process and the combination with other fibrous plants. This composition gave the ball an extraordinary hardness and also a bouncing capacity like no other material at the time.
It could be said that the Mayans built the first solid rubber ball. The ball for the game was made from liquid latex extracted from rubber trees. When heated, the resin formed threads that were first rolled up and then squeezed by hand or pressed in a mould. The weight of the ball varied between 3 and 5 kilos, and when it became deformed it had the be stretched back into shape.
In the depictions, there are some balls small enough to fit in the hand, and others bigger than a soccer ball. There are as many as seventeen ball courts in Chichen Itza with The Great Ball Court being the largest playing field in all of Mesoamerica! With a size of by feet, it is twice the size of a modern American football field! That is absolutely amazing! The two parallel walls are feet high. The ball court is architecturally unique — you may have heard people going on about how this ball court is acoustically perfect.
A whispering gallery allows noise to be communicated between temples located feet or meters apart! The Mayan ballgame was not solely a way for the Maya to entertain themselves. It was a sacred game for them. Pok-ta-tok can be traced back to the time of the Olmecs and the Aztecs and was a religious, political, and social activity in most pre-Colombian cultures. It played a key role in Mesoamerican mythology. Mesoamerican ballgame was not an invention of the Maya.
Xibalba had nine perilous levels ruled by twelve Gods of death — responsible for disease and affliction. This place for the dead was believed to exist side by side with the place for the living i. To put in simply, Xibalba was the afterlife. It was a place where the spirits of the dead would go. They beat the gods of the underworld. The twins were brought back to life by the gods of the sky.
They were reborn and emerged from the underworld as the sun and the moon. The ball court became a place of transition — a place between the stages of life and death. The game became an ancestral tradition during the rise of the Mayan civilization. The overcoming of death by the Hero Twins symbolized rebirth, fertility, and it was seen as the triumph and victory of good over evil. The Maya considered the ball court to be a portal to Xibalba.
The game was used for warfare, to settle territorial disputes and hereditary issues, and to predict the future. Prisons of war would be forced to pay rigged games that led to their inevitable death. It is believed that the winning team was the one sacrificed. This is not mere speculation. To allow us to provide a better and more tailored experience please click "OK". Sign Up.
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