Mayan Ball Game: FA23 ART-104-4467 World Art -ONLINE-

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• a ritual of great importance.

• invented sometime in the Preclassical Period (2500-100 BCE), probably by the Olmec

• likely the ball was hollow with a human skull as the core, encased in rubber.

• When the game was over, human sacrifice was performed,

• this death was seen as a great gift.

• sacrificial victims, offered to the gods, were decapitated, often with their heart cut out.

• only high status prisoners of war were sacrificed,

• Human sacrifice legitimized and sanctified the elites’ political power. It was done to keep life moving.

• It was also seen as a metaphorical parallel to the movements of the cosmos- the regeneration of maize, vegetation and life (seasonality of agriculture.)

• it may have been seen as a reenactment of a important mythological story of two Hero Twins that sacrifice themselves to the gods and then go through the underworld, rise back up and get reborn.

• a ritual for fertility, for war or even astronomy- the ball can be seen as representing the sun and the tossing of it through the ring can be seen as a reenactment of the daily rise and fall it makes in the sky.