![]() ![]() In some variations of the game, players tried to move the ball through rings located on the upper side walls of the ballcourt. The Dominican friar Diego Durán wrote that one objective of the Aztec game was to keep the ball in constant motion. The rules of the ballgame varied from place to place. Likewise, the ballgame may have been played in locations outside the ballcourt. Although ballcourts are primarily associated with the ballgame, archaeological excavation indicates they were used for other purposes as well, like feasting, ritual performances, and other types of sports, including boxing. Ballcourts were also home to stone sculpture, including low-relief panels set into the side walls, as at El Tajín and Chichén Itzá, and round disks called ballcourt markers set into the floor of the central playing aisle, as at Copán. Ballcourts were often placed in the ceremonial center of ancient sites, close to important temples and funerary shrines. Many sites featured multiple ballcourts: at El Tajín, in Veracruz, for example, archaeologists have identified at least fifteen courts. The largest known ballcourt is at Chichén Itzá, where the court is 316 feet (96.5 meters) long and 98 feet (30 meters) wide. Ballcourts vary in size throughout Mesoamerica. In some ballcourts, the endzones are enclosed, and the resulting shape of the ballcourt looks like an upper-case letter “I.” In other ballcourts, the endzones are open. The central playing field is flanked by two long and thin rectangular buildings, which may have served as stands or viewing areas. ![]() Ballcourts typically feature a narrow central playing aisle with an endzone at both extremes ( 1994.35.527). More than 1,500 ballcourts have been discovered in Mesoamerica. The game is played in modern times as well: in the 2017 Mesoamerican Ballgame Tournament, held in Teotihuacan, Mexico, the team from Belize took home the title. The ballgame remained important to cultures throughout Mesoamerica, including the Mixtec and the Aztec, who flourished in southern and central Mexico, respectively, in the centuries immediately prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. 250–900) in the Maya area as well as among the Veracruz cultures of the Gulf Coast. Ballcourts and ballgame imagery increase drastically in the Classic Period (ca. A model of a ballcourt from Nayarit in West Mexico indicates the game was an important part of life as early as the Late Preclassic period (ca. The size of these balls corresponds to the size of ball used in the ballgame, although they could also represent ritual deposits. Additional evidence that may point to the early ballgame comes from the Gulf Coast of Mexico, where Ponciano Ortíz and María del Carmen Rodríguez discovered rubber balls at El Manatí dating to approximately 1600 B.C. Clark excavated a ballcourt dating to 1400 B.C. The earliest evidence for the ballgame comes from Paso de la Amada, Guatemala, where Warren Hill, Michael Blake, and John E. Information about the Mesoamerican ballgame comes from surviving ballcourts, ballgame artifacts and paraphernalia, and ballgame-related imagery and texts. These games share certain aspects, however, particularly their settings and symbolic functions. Mesoamerican peoples played many types of ballgames, with different rules and styles of play. Cultures throughout Mesoamerica played games using rubber balls, and the tradition extended to the Caribbean and the southwestern United States. The game the Spanish witnessed in the Aztec region was just one manifestation of a long-lived and wide-ranging ballgame tradition in Mesoamerica. Upon their arrival in central Mexico, they were so enamored with the Aztec ballgame that they sent a team of indigenous players to Spain to play before the court of Charles V. Before their arrival in the New World, the Spanish had never before seen games played with balls of rubber, a substance unknown in Europe.
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