Two carvings depicting Maya ballplayers in action have given new insight into these bloodthirsty games and suggest they were crucial in connecting different communities.
The panels which date to AD 600 – 800 were found among the long-lost ruins of Tipan Chen Uitz in Belize and are believed to be the first of their kind.
Depictions show players wearing their protective belts alongside hieroglyphics that suggest the balls could have had the circumference equivalent to nine hands.
The game was played for two weeks and sources suggest the winning team’s captain was decapitated which was believed to be a great honour.
Two carvings depicting Maya ballplayers in action have given new insight into these bloodthirsty games. Monument 3 (pictured) depicts a ball and player wearing a protective belt and holding a staff with streamers coming off, which experts believe could be a fan
Home to thousands of Mayans, Tipan Chen Uitz would have had a ‘very impressive palatial complex’ which researchers discovered while excavating these ballplayer monuments.
‘[These monuments] speak to the extent to which Tipan was embedded in these very complex political relationships between ruling elites across the Maya area’, lead researcher Christopher Andres from Michigan State University told Live Science.
The Maya civilisation thrived in Central America for nearly 3,000 years, reaching its height between AD 250 to 900.
Noted for the only fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, the Mayas also had highly advanced art and architecture as well as mathematical and astronomical systems.
Researchers first discovered Tipan Chen Uitz in 2009 after some locals told them about an undocumented site in the jungle and agreed to take them.
They were ‘blown away’ by what they saw: ‘We were all pinching ourselves because we were not expecting to be taken to a site that was so large’, Dr Andres said.
‘The monuments essentially seem to have been part of the façade to the entrance to the palatial complex, where presumably the ruling elites of Tipan would have lived’, Dr Andres said.
The ballgame was believed to have been played throughout the Maya civilisation.
The courts would have been made of stone and were themselves the focus of many Maya cities and indicated its wealth and power.
On monument 4 (pictured), the ballplayer’s name, which translates as ‘bird of prey is the mouth of celestial fire’ has also been spotted on a court in Naranjo, Guatemala. Monument 4 is 2.6 feet long and 1.8 feet tall (0.8 x 0.6 metres)
The two panels were first discovered in 2015.
One of them – called Monument 3 – is split in two and would have originally been 4.7 feet long and 2.1 metres tall (1.4 x 0.7 metres).
It depicts a large player wearing a protective belt and holding a staff with streamers coming off, which experts believe could be a fan.
The hieroglyphics say ‘nine-hand-span ball’, which could refer to the length of material that made the ball or the circumference of the ball itself.
Experts believe the date may translate to AD May 18, 716 and the name of the player written in hieroglyphics may read as ‘Waterscroll Ocelot’.
The second panel – Monument 4 is 2.6 feet long and 1.8 feet tall (0.8 x 0.6 metres) and has around one third of it missing.
The man is wearing the ballplayer belt and researchers believe it depicts the moment ‘this figure lunges forward and braces his left knee, leaning on his left hand as though attempting to strike a ball’.
The ballplayer’s name, which translates as ‘bird of prey is the mouth of celestial fire’ has also been spotted on a court in modern-day Guatemala called Naranjo.
The two panels which date to AD 600 – 800 were found among the long-lost ruins of Tipan Chen Uitz in Belize
This suggests that people living at Tipan had connections with other sites.
Maya influence can be detected from Honduras, Guatemala, and western El Salvador to as far away as central Mexico, more than 1,000km from the Maya area.
The Maya peoples never disappeared. Today their descendants form sizable populations throughout the Maya area.
The findings suggest ‘Tipan was the seat of an influential royal court’ and had ‘public performances involving vassals and overlords participating in the ballgame’.
Although researchers are not sure how much interaction the Mayans at this site had with other communities it could have been a subordinate community connected to Naranjo.