The Mayas had a ball game consisting of two teams where the team members had to get a very hard ball that was about 8 pounds threw a ring to score. The trick was that the only way the players could touch the ball was with their forearm, chest, thigh, and they could not let the ball hit the ground. But that wasn't the crazy part about the game, at the end of the game one of the teams was sacrificed. Archaeologist don't know if it was the winning team or the loosing team that had to die.
Below is a field located in the ruins of Copan in El Salvador where the game was played . If you look on the left just where the slanted wall meets the straight wall, there's a circle, that was the goal and if you look right across to the other side you can see the other goal.
When I was in Guatemala with
La Ruta Inka we had the chance to watch a reenactment of the ceremony before the game and watch the game being played. I found this cool site where you too can watch the game being played and find out more information about the game(
click here). In the video they show the ball rolling on the ground but every where I was told about the game I was told the ball couldn't hit the ground.
The image below is a painting by T. Rutledge the defeat of the Lords of the Underworld by the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque. The scene is one of Creation: The head of the Hero Twins' father, the Sun God, must pass through the Goal Ring, which represents the Dart Rift in the Milk Way. Once this occurs, the world comes into being. The Maya saw Creation as an ongoing event that depends upon the interaction between men and Gods. For the Maya, Creation was not a singular "event" that occurred in the past, and they held the belief that if men and Gods fail to keep the game going, the ball will stop rolling and this ongoing Creation will halt.
