Posted on 04/13/2023 10:56:32 AM PDT by Red Badger
The stone shows two people playing a Mesoamerican ball gameImage: Lorenzo Hernandez/REUTERS
The piece displays Mayan hieroglyphic writing surrounding two players standing next to a ball. The Pok Ta Pok ball game was a traditional practice of Mesoamerican peoples.
An apparent stone scoreboard has been discovered at the Chichen Itza archaeological site in southeastern Mexico, archaeologists have said.
The piece measures just over 32 centimeters (12.6 inches) in diameter and weighs 40 kilograms (around 90 pounds). It dates from between A.D. 800 and 900.
It displays Mayan hieroglyphic writing surrounding two players standing next to a ball, according to Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
"In this Mayan site, it is rare to find hieroglyphic writing, let alone a complete text," archaeologist Francisco Perez, who is coordinating investigations in the Chichanchob complex, said in statements reported by Reuters.
"The limestone circle, which has Mayan hieroglyphics on its edge and in the middle of it of Mayan dignitaries playing Pok Ta Pok, the pre-Columbian ball game, can change the history of the site by providing a new element that we were not aware of," Marco Antonio Santos Ramirez, director of the Chichen Itza archaeological site, said.
The Pok Ta Pok ball game was a traditional practice of Mesoamerican peoples.
Santos Ramirez said that the discovery was made thanks to investment in archaeological sites under Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's government.
INAH researchers are preparing to take high-resolution pictures of the stone for detailed study. They are also to prepare for its conservation.
What is Chichen Itza?
The Chichen Itza complex has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It is one of the main archaeological centers of the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan Peninsula.
About 2 million people visit the site every year.
The Maya civilization was one of the most advanced to arise in Mesoamerica. The earliest Maya settlements were built in about 1,000 B.C..
Santos Ramirez told the EFE news agency that the text on the newly discovered stone could be the last hieroglyphics that reflect the Mayan culture of late antiquity, or around 650-900 A.D.
"Mayan classical literature stops at around 900 AD, during the glory days of Chichen Itza," Ramirez said. He said that the finding could provide new information on pre-Columbian Mayan society.
In May 2021, Lopez Obrador apologized to Mexico's indigenous Maya communities for "abuses" committed by "national and foreign authorities." Indigenous Maya people number almost 1.5 million people in southeastern Mexico and over 7 million in neighboring Guatemala, where they make up just over 40% of the population.
When they can carve the score in stone before hand it seems likely that old assertions that the games were rigged and the destined losers (captives) to be killed may have been accurate.
Seems I read somewhere a long time ago, before the Internet, that these ‘games’ were actually a way to prevent all out war between warring Mayan city-states, by having their teams play the game and being sacrificed if they lose.
That way only a handful of people were killed versus hundreds if not thousands in a full scale war...............
a little hard to see from the nose-bleed section.
My guess is that the outside rim figures are numbers and that some kind of pointer was used to indicate the score. Similar to their calendar.
Since it is a circle, there must have been a ‘Top Score’ to achieve a win, like ‘21’ in basketball or in Tennis................
Only the Kings and their courts were close enough to see, probably......................
and “the ball” has a frowny face on it...
I wonder if it was bad luck to call “heads” for the coin toss.
Oh man. Talk about a ‘career-ending injury’.
I had money on that game!
Did your team lose their head?.....................
Sorry, that was UConn on April 3rd...
the March of Madness...................
🤣
I thought it was going to be for the heart eating contest down at Maya’s all you can eat buffet.
That way only a handful of people were killed versus hundreds if not thousands in a full scale war...............
There was a Star Trek episode kind of like that.
It shows Biden in the lead. Thanks Red Badger.
A few centuries later, if you lost a battle with the Aztecs, were captured, you were put on the court for the last game you’d ever play...
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