The Mesoamerican ballgame (, , ; ), also called pok-ta-pok, was a sport with ritual associations played since at least 1650 BCEJeffrey P. Blomster and Víctor E. Salazar Chávez. "Origins of the Mesoamerican ballgame: Earliest ballcourt from the highlands found at Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico", Science Advances, 13 March 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2020. (the middle Mesoamerican Preclassic period of the pre-Columbian era) by the people of Ancient Mesoamerica. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has formally recognized the Mesoamerican ballgame as the oldest historical precursors to modern football. The sport had different versions in different places during the millennia, and a modernized version of the game, ulama, is still played by the indigenous peoples of Mexico in some places.Fox, John (2012). The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game, 1st ed., New York: Harper. . Cf. Chapter 4: "Sudden Death in the New World" about the Ulama game.
The rules of the game are not known, but judging from its descendant, ulama, they were probably similar to racquetball, where the aim is to keep the ball in play. The stone ballcourt goals are a late addition to the game.
In the most common theory of the game, the players struck the ball with their hips, although some versions allowed the use of forearms, rackets, bats, or handstones. The ball was made of solid natural rubber and weighed as much as and sizes differed greatly over time or according to the version played.
The game had important ritual aspects, and major formal ballgames were held as ritual events. Late in the history of the game, some cultures occasionally seem to have combined competitions with human sacrifice. The sport was also played casually for recreation by children.The primary evidence for female ballplayers is in the many apparently female figurines of the Formative period, wearing a ballplayer loincloth and perhaps other gear. In The Sport of Life and Death, editor Michael Whittington says: "It would [therefore] seem reasonable that women also played the game—perhaps in all-female teams—or participated in some yet to be understood ceremony enacted on the ballcourt." (p. 186). In the same volume, Gillett Griffin states that although these figurines have been "interpreted by some as females, in the context of ancient Mesoamerican society the question of the presence of female ballplayers, and their role in the game, is still debated." (p. 158).
Pre-Columbian ballcourts have been found throughout Mesoamerica, for example at Copán, as far south as Nicaragua, and later, in Oasisamerican sites as far north as Arizona. These ballcourts vary considerably in size, but all have long, narrow alleys with slanted side-walls or vertical walls against which the balls could bounce.
Name The Mesoamerican ballgame is known by a wide variety of names. In English, it is often called pok-ta-pok (or pok-a-tok). This term originates from a 1932 article by Danish archaeologist Frans Blom, who adapted it from the Yucatec Maya word .
In Classical Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec Empire, it was called () or , as well as (). In Classical Maya, it was known as . In modern Spanish, it is called ('Maya ballgame'), ('Mesoamerican ballgame'), or simply ('Maya ball').
Origins
It is not known precisely when or where the Mesoamerican ballgame originated, although it is likely that it originated earlier than 2000 BC in the low-lying tropical zones home to the rubber tree.Shelton, pp. 109–110. There is wide agreement on game originating in the tropical lowlands, likely the Gulf Coast or Pacific Coast.
One candidate for the birthplace of the ballgame is the Soconusco coastal lowlands along the Pacific Ocean.Taladoire (2001) pp. 107–108. Here, at Paso de la Amada, archaeologists have found the oldest ballcourt yet discovered, dated to approximately 1400 BC.
The other major candidate is the Olmec heartland, across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec along the Gulf Coast.Miller and Taube (1993, p.42) The Aztecs referred to their Postclassic contemporaries who then inhabited the region as the Olmeca (i.e. "rubber people") since the region was strongly identified with latex production.These Gulf Coast inhabitants, the Olmeca-Xicalanca, are not to be confused with the Olmec, the name bestowed by 20th-century archaeologists on the influential Gulf Coast civilization which had dominated that region three thousand years earlier. The earliest-known rubber balls in the world come from the sacrificial bog at El Manatí, an early Olmec-associated site located in the hinterland of the Coatzacoalcos River drainage system.Ortiz and Rodríguez (1999), pp. 228–232, 242–243.
Villagers, and archaeologists, have recovered a dozen balls ranging in diameter from 10 to 22 cm from the freshwater spring there. Five of these balls have been dated to the earliest-known occupational phase for the site, approximately 1700–1600 BC.Ortiz and Rodríguez (1999), pp. 228–232, 242–243. These rubber balls were found with other ritual offerings buried at the site, indicating that even at this early date the game had religious and ritual connotations.Diehl, p. 27Uriarte, p. 41, who finds that the juxtaposition at El Manatí of the deposited balls and serpentine staffs (which may have been used to strike the balls) shows that there was already a "well-developed ideological relationship between the [ball]game, power, and serpents." A stone "yoke" of the type frequently associated with Mesoamerican ballcourts was also reported to have been found by local villagers at the site, leaving open the distinct possibility that these rubber balls were related to the ritual ballgame, and not simply an independent form of sacrificial offering.Ortiz and Rodríguez (1999), p. 249Ortíz, "Las ofrendas de El Manatí y su posible asociación con el juego de pelota: un yugo a destiempo", pp. 55–67 in Uriarte
Excavations at the nearby Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán have also uncovered a number of ballplayer figurines, radiocarbon-dated as far back as 1250–1150 BC. A rudimentary ballcourt, dated to a later occupation at San Lorenzo, 600–400 BC, has also been identified.Diehl, p. 32, although the identification of a ballcourt within San Lorenzo has not been universally accepted.
From the tropical lowlands, the game apparently moved into central Mexico. Starting around 1000 BC or earlier, ballplayer figurines were interred with burials at Tlatilco and similarly styled figurines from the same period have been found at the nearby Tlapacoya site. It was about this period, as well, that the so-called Xochipala-style ballplayer figurines were crafted in Guerrero. Although no ballcourts of similar age have been found in Tlatilco or Tlapacoya, it is possible that the ballgame was indeed played in these areas, but on courts with perishable boundaries or temporary court markers.
By 300 BC, evidence for the game appears throughout much of the Mesoamerican archaeological record, including ballcourts in the Central Chiapas Valley (the next oldest ballcourts discovered, after Paso de la Amada),Finca Acapulco, San Mateo, and El Vergel, along the Grijalva, have ballcourts dated between 900 and 550 BC (Agrinier, p. 175). and in the Oaxaca Valley, as well as ceramic ballgame tableaus from Western Mexico (see photo below).
Material and formal aspects
As might be expected with a game played over such a long period of time by many cultures, details varied over time and place, so the Mesoamerican ballgame might be more accurately seen as a family of related games.
In general, the hip-ball version is most popularly thought of as the Mesoamerican ballgame, and researchers believe that this version was the primary—or perhaps only—version played within the masonry ballcourt.Cohodas, pp. 251–288 Ample archaeological evidence exists for games where the ball was struck by a wooden stick (e.g., a mural at Teotihuacan shows a game which resembles field hockey), racquets, bats and batons, handstones, and the forearm, perhaps at times in combination. Each of the various types of games had its own size of ball, specialized gear and playing field, and rules.
Games were played between two teams of players. The number of players per team could vary, from two to four.The 16th-century Aztec chronicler Motolinia stated that the games were played by a two-man team vs. a two-man team, three-man team vs. a three-man team, and even a two-man team vs. a three-man team (quoted by Shelton, p. 107).Fagan, Brian M. The Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World reports that four-man vs four-man team also existed Some games were played on makeshift courts for simple recreation while others were formal spectacles on huge stone ballcourts leading to human sacrifice.
Even without human sacrifice, the game could be brutal and there were often serious injuries inflicted by the solid, heavy ball. Today's hip-ulama players are "perpetually bruised"Cal State L.A. while nearly 500 years ago Spanish chronicler Diego Durán reported that some bruises were so severe that they had to be lanced open. He also reported that players were even killed when the ball "hit them in the mouth or the stomach or the intestines".
The rules of the Mesoamerican ballgame, regardless of the version, are not known in any detail. In contemporary ulama, the game resembles a netless volleyball, with each team confined to one half of the court. In the most widespread version of ulama, the ball is hit back and forth using only the hips until one team fails to return it or the ball leaves the court.
In the Postclassic period, the Maya began placing vertical stone rings on each side of the court, the object being to pass the ball through one, an innovation that continued into the later Toltec and Aztec cultures.
In the 16th-century Aztec ballgame that the Spaniards witnessed, 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 boundaries of the court, or who tried and failed to pass the ball through one of the stone rings placed on each wall along the center line.Day, p. 66, who further references Diego Durán and Bernardino de Sahagún. According to 16th-century Aztec chronicler Motolinia, points were gained if the ball hit the opposite end wall, while the decisive victory was reserved for the team that put the ball through a ring.Shelton, pp. 107–108, who quotes Motolinia. However, placing the ball through the ring was a rare event—the rings at Chichen Itza, for example, were set off the playing field—and most games were likely won on points.
Clothing and gear The game's paraphernalia—clothing, headdresses, gloves, all but the stone—are long gone, so knowledge of clothing relies on paintings, drawings, stone reliefs, and figurines to provide evidence for pre-Columbian ballplayer clothing and gear, which varied considerably in type and quantity. Capes and masks, for example, are shown on several Dainzú reliefs, while Teotihuacan murals show men playing stick-ball in skirts.
The basic hip-game outfit consisted of a loincloth, sometimes augmented with leather hip guards. Loincloths are found on the earliest ballplayer figurines from Tlatilco, Tlapacoya, and the Olmec culture, are depicted in the Weiditz drawing from 1528, and, with hip guards, are the sole outfit of contemporary ulama players (above)—a span of nearly 3000 years.