The Maya ballgame was ritual, not sport: the sacrificed-winner story is invented
The Mesoamerican ballgame is humanity's earliest rubber-ball team sport, but it was religious ritual first: the court re-staged the creation myth, and the people who could be killed were captives who lost a ritual re-enactment. The idea that the winners were sacrificed was made up later.
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The rubber-ball team sport did not start in Greece or China
Ed says team sports in general may well be older, but the ancestor of rubber-ball team sports is very likely the Mesoamerican ballgame. The Greek Olympics had no ball games at all; China and Persia did have ball sports, but they can only be traced back to 500 BC, and the Maya ballgame predates them by at least a thousand years. The current evidence points earlier still: rubber balls from 1600-1700 BC have turned up at Olmec sites, and the oldest ball court dates to roughly 1650 BC.
— Ed BarnhartThe ballgame was never uniquely Maya; all Mesoamerica played it
The game was not a Maya invention but a shared element of every Mesoamerican culture. The Maya heartland sits in modern Guatemala, extending north into the Yucatan peninsula and into Chiapas and Tabasco in Mexico, and south into about half of Honduras; further west lie cultures such as the Zapotec and the Mixtec. The Classic peak runs roughly AD 400 to 800, with each city-state politically independent but sharing religion, calendar, writing and the ballgame.
— Ed BarnhartHips, knees, shoulders and chest only: the hip swing is the signature shot
According to the Aztec rules the Spanish wrote down, players could not use hands or feet; they struck the ball with hips, knees, shoulders and chest, and the classic shot was a swing of the hip. The ball was a solid rubber "super bouncy ball" about six inches across, and taking one on the body hurt. The court had a centre line and end lines: sending the ball past the opponent's end line scored, and putting it through the stone ring set high on the side wall ended the match instantly. Teams had forwards and defenders, much like modern football.
— Ed BarnhartA ball court is a mythic stage first, a playing field second
Ed flatly rejects separating Maya religion from Maya sport. The large stone courts at the centre of Maya cities are ritual spaces first: in the creation myth, the Hero Twins play a ballgame against the lords of the underworld, which makes the court a place to re-enact the moment of creation. The court at Chichen Itza is so vast it hardly looks playable, with stone rings some 30 feet up; dancing, sacrifice and symbolic re-enactment are the more plausible explanation. Courts were often built at the lowest point of a city, mimicking the underworld.
— Ed BarnhartThe game could kill you, and gambling could cost you your family
The ball was more dangerous than it sounds: a Spanish priest watched a player take one in the abdomen, in the gap between his pads, cough blood and die within the hour, probably from ruptured organs. Balls were made from natural rubber cured with sulphur, and the Maya very likely drew that sulphur from morning glory sap; Ed made one himself by the old method and it is still going twenty years later. The betting was just as extreme: a player could stake himself, and a losing run could cost him his money, his house, even his whole family into slavery to a noble. If a noble tried to slip away after a match without throwing gifts, the players had the right to bring him down and take his things.
— Ed BarnhartThe sacrificed-winner story was invented eight years ago by one man
Ed debunks it outright: the claim that the winning players were sacrificed comes from an old man at Chichen Itza who admitted eight years ago that he made it up, because people loved hearing it. Logically, if winning meant death, nobody would play properly. The people who really could be sacrificed were war captives, cast as the lords of the underworld in a ritual re-enactment and killed after they lost. Ed himself dug a headless body out of the centre line of a modest court in Belize, with a turtle shell placed where the skull should have been — a direct echo of the Hero Twins' decapitation story.
— Ed BarnhartA city of 100,000 with no ball court means archaeologists missed it
Teotihuacan, another great Mesoamerican city, may have peaked at 100,000 people, yet no confirmed ball court has been found there, even though its murals show people passing a ball; contemporaneous sites within 50 kilometres all have courts. Ed's view is that this is not evidence they did not play, but that archaeologists have not yet recognised the form it took — possibly temporary courts, built of earth and wood, or simply bouncing the ball off the face of a pyramid. The counterexample shows how far we still are from understanding how the game evolved.
— Ed BarnhartSpain tore down the courts but never actually stamped the game out
Spanish priests saw immediately that the ballgame was inseparable from local religion, so they demolished courts and banned play, meaning to substitute Christianity. But people kept playing underground, especially in regions like Sinaloa that the Spanish could not be bothered to police, and the game never really stopped. Today there are leagues in Yucatan, Guatemala and Belize, with Maya communities forming teams and playing each other again, and Ed hopes it will one day become a proper televised sport, even an Olympic one.
— Ed BarnhartIn their own words · checked verbatim
Well, team sport might be difficult, but ball team sport for sure.
Ed Barnhart1:33
every culture that we know of in Mesoerica played the ballga.
Ed Barnhart4:06
We shouldn't separate Maya religion from Maya sport, especially with the ball game
Ed Barnhart18:56
everybody would try to suck so they could live
Ed Barnhart44:50
the skull wasn't even a skull.It was a turtle carapace.
Ed Barnhart45:56
The Spanish priests quickly realized how absolutely integral the religions of the region were to the ball game.
Ed Barnhart59:01
Figures
| Maya ballgame vs. Chinese/Persian ball sports | at least a thousand years earlier | 1:33 |
| Classic Maya peak | AD 400-800 | 4:06 |
| Standard ball diameter | about 6 inches | 10:00 |
| Height of the stone rings at Chichen Itza | 30 feet above head height | 17:46 |
| Stone ball courts found so far | more than 2,000 | 57:56 |
| Date of the oldest rubber balls (El Manatí) | c. 1600-1700 BC | 1:03:17 |
| Date of the oldest stone ball court (Paso de la Mata) | c. 1650 BC | 1:03:17 |
Glossary
- Popol Vuh
- The creation scripture of the K'iche' Maya, which records the Hero Twins' ballgame against the lords of the underworld.
- Mesoamerica
- The pre-Columbian cultural region from central Mexico to northwestern Central America, sharing a calendar, writing and the ballgame tradition.
- Hero Twins
- The twin ballplayers of Maya myth who defeat the lords of the underworld and become gods of maize and the planets.
- yoke
- The heavy U-shaped protector Mesoamerican players wore around the waist and used to strike the rubber ball.
- morning glory
- Its sap contains sulphur, which the Maya probably used to vulcanise rubber balls for durability.
- ball court
- The distinctively Mesoamerican I-shaped stone arena, a central alley flanked by sloping walls, at once playing field and ritual space.
How to listen
Anyone curious about the Maya and Mesoamerica, from archaeology buffs to sports historians, and anyone who wants myths like "the winners were sacrificed" overturned.
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