Mesoamerican Cultures

The term Mesoamerican cultures indicates the pre-Columbian civilizations that flourished in Central America in the territories of contemporary Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras. Among the most important Mesoamerican cultures are the Olmechs (the “rubber people” of the La Venta region, who flourished around 1200–400 b.c.e.), the Toltechs of Teotihuacan (600–1500 b.c.e.), the Maya (extending from Guatemala to Mexico), and the Aztec Tenocha (a name given to the Mexica or Chicimeca, the Nahuatl-speaking people of the Valley of Mexico). There were several differences in the way play activities such as ballgames, ritual and ceremonial dances, and ritual clowning were organized in different geographical areas and in different time periods; nonetheless, religion, exercise of power, and play were closely intertwined in all the cultures of Mesoamerica.

Some forms of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican ball game, which was already practiced in 1400 b.c.e., have survived until today, such as the Mixtee ballgame. Mesomerican cultures practiced several kinds of ball games, as illustrated by representations of stick-and-ball games on murals in the sacred city of Teotihuacan, or by figurines portraying ball players found all over Mesoamerica. The size of the rubber ball varied—from the dimension of a grapefruit to a weight of up to eight or nine pounds—as well as the specific equipment required, the parts of the body used to project the ball, and the (ritual) contest of the ball game.

The masonry ball courts had roughly the form of an horizontal capitalized letter “I,” a structure apparently connected to the four cardinal directions as well as to the movement of astral bodies. The players scored points by hitting the ball toward markers in the end or lateral zones. Spectators watched the game on platforms located at each end zone; betting on favorite teams or players was a widespread practice.

The main difference between contemporary ball games and the Mesoamerican ball game is that players rarely used their hands and feet. Ball games required remarkable skill; since the ball was heavy and made of solid rubber, and the players used helmets with facial grids, gloves, padded clothing, thick belts, and hip and knee pads.

Scholars have long tried to answer the elusive question: What was the meaning of the ball game? Ball games are mentioned in myth; for example, in the Quiche Maya epic the Popul Vuh, in which the Hero Twins played life and death ball games with the Lords of the Underworld in myth time, or in the Aztec myth in which the sun god Huitzilopochtli oppposed his sister Coyolxauhqui (the moon goddess). The rubber ball most probably symbolized the sun, and as Anthony A. Shelton and others have argued, the ball game played out opposing dualisms. The Aztec ball game Ulla-malitzli was connected to the creation of the cosmos through its founding myth, and gave expression to a series of oppositions between death and regeneration, the sun and the moon, the earth and the nether world, and the universal cycle of dry and wet season. As in the [Page 387]Aztec game, Mayan ball games also put into relation decapitation, death, fertility, and regeneration; but they may also have had divinatory purpose.

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