Aztec Rubber Ball Game

The mesoamerican ball game was a game where the action reached unimaginable levels of violence even by today s standards.

Aztec rubber ball game.

Serious injury was common as players dove onto stone courts to keep a ball in play and would end the game bloodied and bruised. Maya ballgame which is a branch of the mesoamerican ballgame is a sporting event that was played throughout the mesoamerican era by the maya civilization the maya civilization was spread out throughout much of central america. The ball itself was called ōllamaloni and the ballcourt was called a tlachtli ˈtɬatʃtɬi. Each team tried to get a rubber ball across the center line into their opponents side.

The goal of the game was simple. There were two ways to get points. Losing the game hun hunahpús had his head cut off. A foretaste of what would become common practice for players unfortunate enough to lose a game.

Tarkanian and hosler mostly created sheets of rubber in the lab but they did make a few rubber balls during one session. But of course the biggest and best was in the capital city. The aztec version of the ballgame is called ōllamalitzli sometimes spelled ullamaliztli and are derived from the word ōlli rubber and the verb ōllama or to play ball. Ancient mesoamericans were the first people to invent rubber balls nahuatl languages.

The aztec ball game had a distinctive court known as the tlachtli or tlachco. At the end of the semester we played the mesoamerican ball game. The team with the most points won. ōllamaloni sometime before 1600 bce and used them in a variety of roles the mesoamerican ballgame for example employed various sizes of solid rubber balls and balls were burned as offerings in temples buried in votive deposits and laid in sacred bogs and cenotes.

In another legend a famous ball game was held at the aztec capital of tenochtitlan between the aztec king motecuhzoma xocoyotzin r. 1502 1520 ce and the king of texcoco. One of the common links of the mayan culture of mexico guatemala honduras and belize is the game played with a rubber ball about which we have learned from several. The ball court was usually in the shape of an i although there were some variations around the court was a slope surrounded at the outer edge by walls about 8 11 feet high.