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Mesoamerican Ballgame

Posted on January 10, 2018January 10, 2018 by admin

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1,300-year-old Belizean Stone Panels
Depicting Mayan Ballplayers

Two 1,300-year-old stone panels show Mayans playing with nine-handspan balls while carrying fancy fans.

The panels were discovered at the archaeological site of Tipan Chen Uitz in Belize in 2015, dating from about 700 AD. They are the first panels relating to ballplayers found in Belize. The images have short and complete hieroglyphic captions.

Carving on Monument 4 shows a ballplayer wearing a large belt, lunging forward
“as though attempting to strike a ball,” write the reasearchers in the study
[Credit: Christophe Helmke/Antiquity 2017]

The first panel shows a ballplayer, recognizable from his pose and protective belt. He plays with a large, circular ball. In his left hand he holds an elaborate fan. It would have been almost 1.4m wide and 70cm high originally, but about 10% of the image has been lost. It appears that the panel was deliberately defaced, with one figure in particular being very scratched.

The panel has the inscription “nine handspan ball”, suggesting a measurement of the circumference of the ball. Elsewhere, the player appears to be given the unusual nickname “Waterscroll Ocelot”. On the second panel, which is slightly smaller, also shows a figure in the thick of the action of a game. Again, the area around the figure’s face has been hammered off.

Ballgames were important in the social and political spheres of the Mayan culture, the authors of a new study on the panels write in a study published in the journal Antiquity.

“Iconographic and glyphic analysis of these panels within a regional context provides new insights into large-scale socio-political relationships, demonstrating that the ballgame was an important means and mechanism for macropolitical affiliation in the Maya Lowlands,” the authors, led by Christopher Andres of Michigan State University, write in a study on the panels.

The game was by no means limited to the common Mayan people. Nobility and local rulers were often depicted playing, and foreign dignitaries were also frequently depicted in images and artwork dating from the time.

“These ballplayer panels may reflect a greater system of allegiances cemented in part by public performances involving [land owners] and overlords participating in the ballgame,” the authors write.

It’s hoped that further study of these panels could elucidate more of the socio-political landscape of the more distant and poorly recorded elements of Mayan history.

Author: Martha Henriques | Source: International Business Times [September 27, 2017]

Mayan End of World Prediction Explored in Film

Posted on June 11, 2011 by admin

Museum of Natural Science in Houston explores the Mayan endate. Sumners says the end of Maya time periods generally were regarded the same way we look at such things as the start of a new century or a new millennium. “It seems to be a cause of celebration. There does not seem to be any indication in the Maya writings of great disaster.

Full Article
theHoustonMuseumofnaturalscience

The Book of the People: Popol Vuh

Posted on January 3, 2010 by admin

This book is now available in MesoAmericas.com Book Collection. To visit and read go to: http://www.mesoamericas.com/books/PolopVuh001.php

This book, written shortly after the Spanish Conquest by a Quiché Indian who had learned to read and write Spanish, is generally known as the Popol Vuh, Popol Buj, Book of the Council, Book of the Community, the Sacred Book, or National Book of the Quiché, and it contains the cosmogonical concepts and ancient traditions of this aboriginal American people, the history of their origin, and the chronology of their kings down to the year 1550.

The name of its author and the fate of his original manuscript, which remained hidden for more than 150 years, are unknown. Father Ximénez, who found it in his parish at Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, transcribed the original Quiché text and translated it into Spanish under the title Historias del origen de los Indios de esta Provincia de Guatemala. This transcription, in the handwriting of this priest-historian, is still preserved; but no information has survived concerning the original document written in the Quiché tongue.

1,300-year-old Belizean Stone Panels Depicting Mayan Ballplayers

1,300-year-old Belizean Stone Panels
Depicting Mayan Ballplayers