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As it might be expected with a game played over such a long period of time by several different nations, details of the games varied over time and place, so the Mesoamerican ballgame might be more accurately seen as a family of related games. Some versions of the game were played between two individuals, others between 2 teams of players. For the Aztecs, it was a nobles' game and was often associated with heavy betting. According to Fray Diego Duran, gambling was frequent. People evidently bet everything they owned and even staked themselves, ending up as slaves.
The goal was to knock the ball into the opponent's end of the court; in post-Classical times, the object was to make the ball pass through one of two vertical stone rings that were placed on each side of the court, The ring was first used in the northern Maya lowlands during the Postclassic. In the modern-day surviving version of ulama, the goal has evolved to resemble volleyball. Each player often had a teammate directly behind him or her to provide backup. In the most common version of the game, the ball was thrown by hand into the court, and thenceforth the players hit it back and forth with hips, thighs, and upper arms (but not by kicking or throwing with one’s hands) and through hoops set along the side walls of the court. In some versions of the game, the feet were used as in modern football soccer. In others, bats, paddles or mitts were used. Both men and women played the game. Children also played the game casually for simple recreation. There are obviously no eye-witnesses to the Classic Maya ball game, but perhaps the sixteenth century Aztec ball game that the Spaniards witnessed may provide some comparisons. In the Aztec ball game points were lost by a player who let the ball bounce more than twice before returning it to the other team, who let the ball go outside the court, or who failed to pass the rather heavy ball (weighting 3 to 4 kilograms) through one of the stone hoops placed on each wall along the center line. In the Maya area there are similar hoops, some of which were quite high, as at Chichen Itza, where they were set 6 meter from the ground.
The players wore protective quilted cotton armor, perhaps filled with unspun cotton, wrapped around waist yokes probably made of wood, but certainly not the stone yokes found at some sites. Hatches, or carved heads, often trophy heads, were set into the yokes, as shown on a Late Classic pottery figurine ball player wearing a yoke with a bird hatch. Brightly painted deer hides adorned with feathers were worn around the hips and provided some additional protection, as well as adding to the rich attire of the players. Players also wore knee pads and had protective wrappings on their legs and lower arms. On certain occasions, the players wore elaborate headdresses, the latter commonly depicted on painted pottery vessels. Some of the players were masked, as in the case of Yax Pac from Copan, underscoring the ritual play of the ball game.
The game was frequently extremely violent. There were often serious injuries inflicted by the dense, heavy ball and by other players, and death was not uncommon. Some contusions (bruises) suffered during play were so severe that they would have to be cut open (lanced), and the blood squeezed out. This would have certainly been significant in the rituals of sacrifice and bloodletting that accompanied the Aztec ballgame. It is unknown whether physical contact was permitted between players.
On some occasions post-game ceremonies featured the sacrifice of the captain and other players on the losing side. The association of the game with sacrifice and death was particularly marked on the Gulf coast. A loser's skull might be used as the core around which a new rubber ball would be made.[ Human sacrifice became a more common outcome of the ball game, particularly at the royal courts of powerful cities. Late Classic Maya nobles were warriors and ball players. A step on a hieroglyphic staircase at Yaxchilan, for example, shows King Bird Jaguar defeating a war captive in the ball game, and there is a written reference to a war captive on an altar in Tikal. War captives played ball against the war victors, with the outcome being predetermined. Following the game which was a ritual reenactment of the defeat of a city-state, the captives were commonly decapitated or their hearts were torn out for blood sacrifice. The walls of the principal ball court at Chichen Itza depict opposing teams, with the leader of the winning team holding the decapitated head of the opposing leader, who kneels with blood in the form of snakes spewing from his neck.
The Balls
Archaeological evidence indicates that rubber was already in use in Mesoamerica by the Early Formative Period (1600 BCE). By the time of the Spanish Conquest, rubber was being exported from tropical zones to all over Mesoamerica. Iconography suggests that although there were many uses for rubber, rubber balls both for offerings and for ritual ballgames were the primary products. Solid rubber balls were burned in front of images of deities and inside pyramids and shrines. In addition to the symbolism referred to above, the rubber balls were symbolic of fertility as both the Aztecs and the Maya equated the latex that flowed from inside of the tree with blood and semen.
The game was played with a hard rubber ball made from latex of the rubber tree (Castilla elastica), which is indigenous to the tropical areas of southern Mexico and Central America. The latex was made into rubber by mixing it with the juice of the morning glory (species Ipomoea alba). This rubber was quite startling to the sixteenth century Spaniards. Europeans of the time had no similar ball that could bounce in their sports.
Although no rubber balls have been recovered from ancient Maya sites, three bowls the sacred cenote at Chichen Itza contain a mixture of rubber, copal, jade, and shell that had been burned as an offering before the vessels were thrown into the cenote. Somewhat deformed from centuries in the ground, the actual Olmec rubber ball from El Manatí, Veracruz, Mexico, was preserved because of its waterlogged setting. The balls evidently varied in size up to 30 centimeters in diameter and were solid.
The Court
Ball courts, especially those of the main political cities of the Late Classic Maya, were public spaces used for a variety of elite cultural events and ritual activities like musical performances and festivals, and of course, the ball game. Pictorial depictions often show musicians playing at ball games. The depictions of masked players underscores the dramatic, ritual aspect of the ball game and the link with other forms of drama that may have unfolded on the court, as suggested by the painted murals at Bonampak, for example. Certainly, ordinary people also played the ball game, using fields unmarked by the grandiose stone-lined courts of the Royal Maya.
Most ball courts were I-shaped, with a long, narrow playing field flanked by, sloping, walls in the Classic and vertical or stepped walls in the Post Classic, that were plastered and brightly painted. The end zones evidently held temporary scaffolding for seating. It has been estimated that the average size of the field measured 36.5 meters by 9 meters, although there was tremendous variation. Stone friezes on the walls, as at Chichen Itza, depicted ritual sacrifice. The largest ball court is the main one at Chichen Itza, measuring 185 meters long and 70 meters wide – longer than an American football field.
The court or field where the game was played was called Pitz, and the action of play was Ti Pitziil in Classic Maya[3],Chaaj in Quiche, tlachtli by the Aztec and tlaxtli by neighboring central Mexican peoples; the game itself was called ollama, or ulama in Sinaloa (where it continues to be played); and poc-ta-tok was a Yucatec Maya name for the game.
Across Mesoamerica, ball courts were built and used for many generations, and their shapes and sizes vary. Some sites had multiple ball courts, and others had only one. Ballcourts are found in most sizable Mesoamerican ruins, although in some areas they are conspicuously absent.
Ancient cities with particularly fine ballcourts in good condition include Tikal, Yaxha, Copán, Iximche, Monte Albán, Uxmal, Mixco Viejo and Zaculeu; the grandest ancient ballcourt of all is at Chichen Itza, measuring 166 by 68 metres. Strangely, a ball court has not been found in the ruins at Teotihuacan.
Ball game in art
Ball players and the ballgame are a common theme in Mesoamerican art. Vessels for the ritual consumption of cacao often depict detailed scenes of ball courts and ball players in full regailia--protective padding and elaborate headdresses. It is fitting that Maya vessels used for drinking cacao beverages are often decorated with scenes from the ritual ballgame; it represents many layers of symbolism. The cacao fruit is symbolic of a human heart because it is similarly divided into chambers. The beverage produced from cacao beans is dark and thick like blood, and is consumed in ritual practices. From another point of view, cacao beans are used as currency. It is thought that sacrifices performed following a ritual ballgame were attempts by rulers to appease the gods and ensure fertility and economic abundance. The rubber balls used in the ballgame also have economic symbolism in that the rubber used to produce them was also central to their trade economy. All of these layers interconnect so that scenes of the ritual ballgame, played to ensure economic stability and abundance, appear on vessels for drinking cacao--itself an economic staple, consumed ritually as a symbol for human blood. The vases are often rimmed with glyphs.
The ceramic cylinder vessels with ballgame scenes, although with unknown origin, were believed to have belonged to a kingdom centered near Zapote Bobal and El Pajaral, Guatemala. On one of the vessels found, there is a vertical column(glyph) that names a king of Motul de San José of the adjacent kingdom to the west that encompassed Lake Peten-Itza. The relationship between the two domain is unclear, but it is possible that the scenes allude to an inter-kingdom contest, rather than the more familiar rituals of post-battle sacrifice or mythic re-enactment of the great Underworld game.
One of the most famous ceramic figurines of ballplayers were the so called "paired figurines" found in Jaina, Mexico (600-900 CE). They were found together during Mexican excavations on the Jaina Island in the early 1960s. These ballplayer figurines work together as a pair. Each goes down on his left knee and cocks the left arm, and they can easily be arranged to be in eternal play, the ball suspended in the observer's mind for all time. The maker of these figurines took care to detail the costumes. Protective wraps shield only one arm, from wrist to elbow, along with a single knee pad. Probably this was to show how they complete and complement each other in order to exist as a pair. Thick cotton quilting, perhaps attached to wicker or wood, is then held in place with great ropes or bands. The simple caps on their heads suggest that the figurines may once have sported elaborate headgear, now lost.
Other figurines, mainly found in Jalisco (Mexico), depicted seated ballplayers, in the American Etzatlán style of Jalisco, holding a large ball. The ceramic sculpture of Jalisco was used as funerary offerings in the tombs of members of important families. It is conjectured that depictions of ballplayers were meant to accompany the burial of a man who had been a skilled player.
Another piece of art relating the ball game were the circular stones found in La Esperanza, Mexico (existed around 591 CE). The stones made from limestone were often set face-up in the central alley of ball courts where, as one of three, they demarked playing zones or scoring devices in the game. The examples from La Esperanza, a small site near the larger one of Chinkultic, Chiapas, Mexico, carry especially well preserved scenes. The most often depicted ballplayer wears a long kilt of animal hide, along with a heavy waist belt, knee and forearm protectors, as he kneels to strike a ball. The ball itself displays the finely incised portrait of Hun Hunahpu, the father of the Hero Twins. According to the Popol Vuh, the Underworld foes outwit Hunahpu, decapitate him, and introduce his head as a ball in the game. The scalloped cut-shell design of his headdress identifies the ballplayer himself to be an important Underworld deity. The captions to the scene, however, make clear that this is an impersonation ritual, and that the player is actually a lord of Chinkultic, a kingdom anciently known as Sky (chan). The rim inscriptions on one of the stones describe the dedication of the stone, and probably the ball court it once graced, on 19 May 591.
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