Asides

History | In hard stone, ancient ball-playing exploits remain

By John Turnbull ⋅ March 6, 2008
⋅ ⋅ ⋅ Post a comment

Ongoing exhibits in Chicago and Washington, D.C., feature artifacts of ball-playing in Mesoamerican cultures as part of larger surveys of the ancient Americas.

A ceremonial hip belt of hard gray stone, among artifacts discovered in Puerto Rico in deposits left by the Taíno (700–1500 CE). During the Taíno ball game, known as batey, the ball could be struck with shoulder, elbow, head, hips, buttock or knees—not with the hands. Players wore hip protection of leather and wicker. (Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress | Photo © Justin Kerr, Kerr Associates)

“The Ancient Americas” at the Field Museum and “Exploring the Early Americas” at the Library of Congress depict the interaction of Maya, Aztec, Inca, Taíno and other Mesoamerican civilizations with European explorers (see New York Times review). In Washington, curators have placed several ball-playing relics on display, including the Taíno ceremonial belt (see above) and a well-known limestone bas-relief of a Maya player in headdress (see 30 Jun 07 for more on the Maya ball games). The online version of the Field Museum exhibition includes a picture of a small ball court in Tikal, now part of the Petén region of northern Guatemala.

In Washington one can see a Diego Rivera watercolor commissioned for a 1931 edition of the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation tale that features the ball-playing exploits of the first four humans.

“Now it still ripples, now it still murmurs, ripples, it still sighs, still hums, and it is empty under the sky,” the story begins. Summarizes E. Michael Whittington in the introduction to The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame (Thames & Hudson, 2001)—the companion catalog to an exhibition mounted several years ago by the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina:

Beginning in a time of profound quiet and stillness, the gods made the earth and all its creatures, they planted the first maize, and, finally, they created humanity. The actions of the gods were models for human behavior. Not coincidentally, the gods were terrific ballplayers. The Popol Vuh establishes the absolute preeminence of the ballgame in ancient Maya mythology and life. … The story’s protagonists, the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, are ballplayers without peers, talents they inherited from their deity fathers. (17)

Tags: Aztec, ball games, Field Museum, Guatemala, Inca, Library of Congress, Maya, Mesoamerican ballgames, Mint Museum of Art, Taíno, Tikal