Mesoamerican ballgame

(noun)

A sport with ritual associations played since 1,400 BC by the pre-Columbian peoples of Ancient Mesoamerica. The sport had different versions in different places during the millennia, and a newer more modern version of the game, ulama, is still played in a few places by the indigenous population.

Related Terms

Examples of Mesoamerican ballgame in the following topics:

  • Ceramcis of the Veracruz

    • In contrast to Smiling Figures from Remojadas, the mold-made ceramic figure from Nopiloa (below) depicts a bearded, mustachioed male wearing a ballgame yoke around his waist to protect him from the hard, solid rubber ball used in play.
    • There are cylindrical ear ornaments in his ears and, beneath his arm, a baton-like object perhaps related to the local incarnation of the ballgame.
    • The rules and manner in which the Mesoamerican ballgame was played varied among contemporary sites and evolved through time.
    • The people of ancient Veracruz interacted with people from other Mesoamerican cultures, and this Nopiloa figure displays motifs commonly found in Maya art.

  • Architecture of the Maya

    • The Great Ball Court northwest of the Castillo is the largest and best preserved court for playing the Mesoamerican ball game, an important sport with ritual associations played by Mesoamericans since 1400BCE.  
    • The modern version of the Mesoamerican ballgame is called Ulama which is similar to racquetball.

  • Colossal Heads of the Olmec

    • The Olmec culture of the Gulf Coast of Mexico produced the first major Mesoamerican art, and is particularly known for the creation of colossal stone heads.
    • The first major Mesoamerican art, that of the Olmec, emerged during the Preclassic period along the Gulf of Mexico.

  • The Mixteca-Puebla Tradition

    • This variant of artistic style and iconography, commonly found in pottery, became associated with traits of the Toltec archaeological tradition in Mesoamerican culture during the early post-classic period (800-1000).

  • Codices of the Mixtec

    • Nevertheless, these manuscripts allow us to trace Mixtec history from 1550 CE back to 940 CE, deeper in time than any other Mesoamerican culture except the Maya.
    • In Mixtec, the relationships among pictorial elements denote the meaning of the text, whereas in other Mesoamerican writing the pictorial representations are not incorporated into the text.

  • Teotihuacan

    • The people of Teotihuacan worshipped many deities that were recognizably similar to those worshipped by later Mesoamerican people, including the Aztecs, who dominated central Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest.
    • The Temple of the Feathered Serpent was enlarged several times, and - as was characteristic of Mesoamerican pyramids - each enlargement completely enclosed the previous structure, like the layers of an onion.

  • Sculpture of the Aztecs

    • As with many Mesoamerican cultures, the Aztecs excelled in stone sculptures that ranged from small works of art to monumental buildings.

  • Codices of the Aztecs

    • The second section documents the Mesoamerican 52-year cycle, showing in order the dates of the first days of each of these 52 solar years.