The Daily Telegraph

Ashes of Mayan rulers rolled up into balls made for sport

- By James Crisp

THE ashes of Mayan rulers were incorporat­ed into balls used for the world’s oldest known team sport so that they could live on after death, an archaeolog­ist has claimed.

Juan Yadeun Angulo discovered 400 urns containing ashes, coal, rubber and roots in a crypt at the Sun Temple at the Tonina archaeolog­ical site in Mexico.

The archaeolog­ist believes the area, deep under the site’s most important pyramid and built between the 7th and 8th centuries, was used for cremations.

The ashes were mixed with roots and rubber, he believes, to make the heavy balls used in pelota, a ballgame used in religious rituals that was played in Mesoameric­a thousands of years ago.

“We have evidence they were incorporat­ed into balls. During the Classic Period the balls were gigantic,” said Mr Yadeun, of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropolo­gy and History. He said the Maya wanted the remains of their rulers to be “converted into a life force, something to stimulate their people”.

Mr Yadeun added that stone carvings found at the site supported his theory. The carvings suggest three rulers, who died between 722AD and 776AD, were taken to the “cave of the dead” for “transmutat­ion”. “Just as Egyptians tried to preserve [bodies], we know here they were transforme­d in another way,” Mr Yadeun said.

The Toniná archaeolog­ical site in southern Mexico is built on a hill in the Chiapas jungle and boasts a well-preserved sunken court where the Maya played pelota, a game that dates back more than 3,000 years. Its rules are not clear but it is thought that the object of the game was to keep in play a ball that could weigh up to 91 lbs.

Hips and forearms could be used to hit the ball in various versions of the game, which is thought to have similariti­es to racquetbal­l. Some scholars claim games ended with a human sacrifice.

Courts for the games were a focal point in ancient Maya cities and symbolised their wealth and power. They varied in size and had angled walls for the ball to bounce against.

A modern version of the game, ulama, is played by some indigenous population­s. It was revived after the Catholic Spanish invaders suppressed it in the 16th century because of its importance in Mayan rituals.

The Maya civilisati­on developed in the Mesoameric­an region of south-eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador.

The last Maya city fell to the Spanish colonisers in 1697.

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