Tour Tula: The Ball Courts

In anticipation of Super Bowl Sunday, I thought it only appropriate to finish my tour of Tula at the ball courts.  Tula’s archaeological zone boasts two ball courts.  These low cobble-walled depressions consist simply of a long central alleyway capped at both ends by  perpendicular endzones.  The effect is an I-shaped playing field.

Tula Ball Court
From abrock.com

The origins of the ball game date back to the 1^st millennium BC with the Olmec culture who discovered the elasticity of the latex they collected from the rubber trees.  The ball game grew to be a staple throughout Mesoamerica, from the early Olmecs to the pre-conquest Aztecs.  It may surprise you to know that the ball game is still being played today in parts of north-western Mexico!

The rules of the game varied slightly from site to site, but essentially, two teams battled it out on the ball courts, directing a solid rubber ball into their opponents half of the court without letting it hit the ground.  The catch – the players could not use their hands or feet.

Unlike our modern game of Football (unless you want to consider Tim Tebow’s influence) the Mesoamerican ball game had great religious significance.  According to independent Mesoamerican researcher, John Major Jenkins, the ball game also had tremendous cosmological symbolism.   And unlike Football (thankfully), the losing team of the ball game were often sacrificed or decapitated and their heads strung on skull racks called tzompantlis.  The demolished remains of a tzompanti has even been found in Tula, which shouldn’t surprise us coming from a culture that celebrated Team Tezcatlipoca’s victory over Team Quetzalcoatl!


Depiction of Tzompantli in Chichen Itza
From Crystalinks.com