What the game that the Mayans were famous for playing that involved hitting a ball with their hips?
Pok-A-Tok was a ball game played by the ancient Maya well over 1000 years ago in what’s now Cancun and Riviera Maya.
What is the Mayan rubber ball game called?
Names. The Mesoamerican ballgame is known by a wide variety of names. In English, it is often called pok-ta-pok (or pok-a-tok). This term originates from a 1932 article by Danish archaeologist Frans Blom, who adapted it from the Yucatec Maya word pokolpok.
What was the punishment for losing a ball game in Mayan culture?
The penalty for losing a game was sometimes unusually harsh: death. The leader of the team who lost the game was sometimes killed. This fit in with the Mayan belief that human sacrifice was necessary for the continued success of the peoples’ agriculture, trade, and overall health.
What happened to the losers in Pok-A-Tok?
Pok-A-Tok was often played by prisoners of war, and the members of the losing team were offered as sacrificed to the gods. Pok-A-Tok games would go on without interruption for long periods of time, often for days.
What is the Olmec ball game?
The Mesoamerican ball game is a sport that people in Mesoamerica have played since about 1,400 B.C.E. It was the first team sport in history, as far as historians know. The Olmecs, who lived from 1,200 B.C.E. to 400 B.C.E., played the Mesoamerican ballgame. They may have created the game.
What was the ball game and what role did it play in Mesoamerican life?
While the ballgame was a source of sport and entertainment in ancient Mesoamerica, it also had important symbolic associations. Some scholars have suggested that the movement of the ball across the court is analogous to the movement of the sun across the sky.
How did they play the Mayan ball game?
The ball, made out of rubber, was about the size of a volleyball and weighed between 6 to 10 pounds. Players would play on teams of two to four. Each team passed the ball back and forth between themselves and members of the opposing team. They were only allowed to hit the ball with their legs, arms and hips.
Why did the Mayans play Pok-A-Tok for kids?
However, most of the time, games of Pok-A-Tok became a religious spectacle filled with ritual importance. The sport played a political role and was often used as a way of solving disputes between rivals and sometimes offered an alternative to battle between warring towns.
What is a Mesoamerican ballgame?
Mesoamerican ballgame. The ball in front of the goal during a game of pok-ta-pok. The Mesoamerican ballgame was a sport with ritual associations played since 1400 BC by the pre-Columbian people of Ancient Mesoamerica.
Why choose sacrifice scooters?
Sacrifice has been paving the way in the stunt scooter scene for over half a decade – innovating and creating, where other brands follow. Sacrifice Scooters is firmly rooted in Pro Level action sports, thanks to the owners 20+ years of riding BMX, bringing product advances from outside of scootering into the sport.
How did they hit the ball in Mesoamerican baseball?
Mesoamerican ballgame. In the most common theory of the game, the players struck the ball with their hips, although some versions allowed the use of forearms, rackets, bats, or handstones. The ball was made of solid rubber and weighed as much as 4 kg (9 lbs), and sizes differed greatly over time or according to the version played.
What are the rules of the Mesoamerican ballgame?
The rules of the Mesoamerican ballgame, regardless of the version, are not known in any detail. In modern-day ulama, the game resembles a netless volleyball, with each team confined to one half of the court.