Episode 33 - The Big Game!

Every year, the American football season ends with the Big Game, but this week, Anna and Amber are superfans of a much bigger game: the 3500-year-old Mesoamerican ballgame. From its Olmec origins to the athletes keeping it alive today, learn all about how to play, why you might not want to (ouch), and what makes it so significant to past and present communities.

To learn more about this week’s topic, check out:

Scarborough, V. L., & Wilcox, D. R. (1991). The Mesoamerican ballgame. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Whittington, E. M., & Mint Museum of Art. (2001). The sport of life and death: The Mesoamerican ballgame. New York: Thames & Hudson.

Ballgame (NEH Summer Teachers Institute)

The Mesoamerican Ballgame (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Brutal and Bloody History of the Mesoamerican Ball Game, Where Sometimes Loss Was Death (Atlas Obscura)

Early evidence of the ballgame in Oaxaca, Mexico (PNAS)

Maya Ritual and Myth: Human Sacrifice in the Context of the Ballgame and the Relationship to

the Popol Vuh (OpenSIUC)

Popol Vuh (Mesoweb)

Glyphs for “Handspan” and “Strike” in Classic Maya Ballgame Texts (The PARI Journal)

Death Ball (National Geographic)

Tlachtli (Polymer Science Learning Center)

"Ulama", the Survival of the Mesoamerican Ballgame Ullamaliztli (Kiva)

Mexico revives 3,000-year-old ancient ball game (BBC)

The History Of Indigenous Sinaloa (Houston Institute of Culture)

Photo credit: The Aztec god, Xiuhtecuhtli, as one of the nine Lords of the Night, on page 14 of the Codex Borgia, with an offering of rubber balls. Public Domain, via Wikimedia.