COMMANDER TANK'S ANCIENT BALL GAMES PORTAL

Hi, time travellers! Commander Tank!
What was that all about?.....
Well it seems in ancient times you could loose
your head if you lost (some say won) a ball game!
I certainly wasn't going to take a chance
with all those people chasing me!
What game?
Ulama or Ullamaliztli,
the game that is 3500 years old and still alive!

The players deflected the ball with their hips and buttocks. The essential garment
for these hip players consisted of a maxtlatl (loincloth), leather hipguards, and
wide leather bands around the buttocks. The game could, however, also be played
using the arms and elbows to deflect the ball, with a stick, or with a manopla ( a
handstone) used to bat the ball.

Ullamaliztli was as much areligious rite as sandlot sport for the Aztecs and other
Mesoamericans. In their codices, or sacred books, the Aztecs compared the
bouncing ball to the cosmic journey of the sun into and out of the underworld.
Highly ritualized ballgames enacted at key religious festivals helped to ensure the
continuous cycles of nature and the cosmos. Ball courts in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec
capital (in what is now Mexico City), were adorned with sculptures depicting local
gods and other supernatural beings. Priests initiated important games with
offerings of incense in nearby temples. At least some of the games saw human
sacrifice. On some occasions, post-game ceremonies featured the sacrifice of the
captain and other players on the losing (some references say "winning") side.The
losing players—or unlucky stand-ins captured in battle—could literally lose their
heads in post-game ceremonies. Some assert that the prize for the winning team
was to be deified by losing their heads, supposedly at the hands of the losing
team. In one graphic depiction on the walls of the monumental ninth-century Maya
ball court at Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán, serpents and squash plants sprout from
the neck of a kneeling, decapitated player, bestowing fertility on the land and the
living. A rival player wields a stone knife and the freshly severed head as his grisly
trophy. One way or the other, now you can see why I was running! I certainly
didn't have time to ask which was the case. Going back in time does present
certain challenges!

The ballcourt, called Thachtli in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, consisted
of an oblong field with a wider part at each end giving it the shape of a capital I.
Possibly, the original game was played on a levelled field without limits marked
by walls or earthen curbs. It was an extremely powerful place and was the
transitional portal between the world of the gods and the world of humans. As a
source of sacred power it was a place where transformations occur:
Death-Life, Underworld-Middleworld, Humanity-Divinity, Drought-Fertility.

The game is one of the oldest continuously-played sports in the world (wrestling,
for example, is even older). It is also notable for the fact that it is the oldest
game which utilizes a rubber ball, as rubber is indigenous to the Americas.The
name is a combination of two words: ullama, which means the playing of a game
with a ball, and ulli, rubber, because it's played with a solid rubber ball. So in
other words "Ballgame", like "take me out to the ball game and I could lose my
head!" The ball symbolized the sun, moon, or stars, and the rings signified sunrise
and sunset, or equinoxes. Rubber balls were primarily used both for offerings
and for ritual ballgames Solid rubber balls were burned in front of images of
deities and inside pyramids and shrines. Archeologists have uncovered 700 ball
courts, rubber balls that have been dated as far back as 1500 BC, and figurines
recognizable as ulama players dating from c. AD 400!

The ballgame was played by the Aztecs and other Nahuatl-speaking peoples in
Mexico. For the Aztecs, it was a nobles' game and was often associated with
heavy betting. Heavy as in some gambled their homes, their fields, their corn
granaries, their maguey plants. They sold their children in order to bet and even
staked themselves and became slaves, to be sacrificed later if they were not
ransomed.

The game has three main forms: most common is ulama de cadera or hip ulama;
ulama de antebrazo, where predominantly female players on three-player teams
hit a smaller ball with their forearms; and ulama de palo or de mazo, which is
played with a wooden bat. According to historians, hip ulama is the form closest to
the original ballgame.

Hip ulama is played with two five-man teams that are only permitted to bounce
the ball with their hips after the first throw. The modern form uses knitted
loincloths and rubber balls that weighs about 4 kg (9 lb). The court is about 50 m
(165 ft) long and 4 m (13 ft) wide and is divided by a central line separating the
two teams.

The object of the game is to keep the ball in play and in bounds. Depending on the
score – and the local variant of the rules – the ball is played either high or low. A
team scores a point when a player of the opposing team hits the ball out of turn;
misses the ball; knocks the ball out of bounds; touches the ball with his hands or
some other body part aside from the hip; accidentally touches a teammate; lets
the ball stop moving before it reaches the center line, or even if they fail to
announce the score after they have scored a point.

The team that first scores eight points wins. Keeping score is a rather
complicated process; the score can jump directly from one point to three points,
for example. If both teams end up having the same number of points after a
turn, both sides begin again from zero. One record-setting game reputedly lasted
for eight days but most modern games are stopped after about two hours.