A baseball player is allowed to tap his helmet three times before stepping to the plate, and an Argentine fan is allowed to light incense in front of a portrait of Diego Maradona when the Albiceleste whistles. Now a team of archaeologists has found evidence that the ancient Maya blessed their ball courts with ritual offerings, an indicator of how much sport meant to Mayan communities.
In their new paper, published today in PLoS One, the researchers describe “the discovery of a distinctive ritual deposit” beneath a ball game platform in the Mayan city of Yaxnohcah in modern-day Mexico, near Guatemala’s northern border. Environmental DNA analysis of the deposit revealed the presence of medicinal and hallucinogenic plants, suggesting they were buried for ritual purposes.
“I think the fact that these four plants, which have known cultural significance to the Maya, were found in a concentrated sample shows us that this was an intentional and targeted collection under this platform,” Eric said Tepe, a botanist at the University of Cincinnati co-authored the paper, in a university release.
Mesoamerican ball games were of great social, political and spiritual importance. Rules for the ball game likely varied by region and over time, but as described by Gizmodo in 2020:
This Mesoamerican sports competition used a solid rubber ball and was played on narrow brick fields surrounded by sloping stone walls. The rules are not exactly known and the sport varied from region to region (including the size and configuration of courts), but the general goal was to keep the ball in constant motion, similar to modern sports such as volleyball and racquetball. But instead of using hands, feet or rackets, players used their upper bodies and hips to keep the heavy rubber ball in play by bouncing it off the sloping side walls.
As Gizmodo reported at the time, about 2,300 likely ballparks have been identified so far in modern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. It was the most beautiful game of its time; The oldest known ball court is the 3,670-year-old Paso de la Amada in Chiapas, Mexico.
Environmental DNA analysis takes a sample of an environment and extracts genetic information from it, giving researchers a snapshot of the organic material in the area.
Environmental DNA from several plants was identified from the sample, including Ipomoea corymbosa, Capsicum, Hampea trilobata and Oxandra lanceolata, all of which have medicinal properties. The latter two plants have known ceremonial purposes, the team wrote, while the former two are associated with divination rituals. I. corymbosa (xtabentum in the Mayans or ololiuhqui in the Aztecs) has hallucinogenic properties and, according to the researchers, its presence on the ball court is the first time it has been described in a Mayan archaeological context.
“In general, the consumption of hallucinogenic substances played a crucial role in the rituals of Mayan kings and high priests because it enabled them to receive the energy of the gods,” the researchers write. While there was no evidence that the ball game athletes themselves consumed such hallucinogens before or during the ball game, given the stakes, they probably hoped that the energy of the gods was on their side.
“Whatever the intention of the Maya supplicants, it seems clear that some kind of divination or healing ritual took place at the base of the Helena ballcourt complex in the late Preclassic period,” the study authors concluded.
The material culture, which reveals details of the massive earthworks and stonework from which the courtyards were constructed, is not a new area of research. In 2020, researchers announced the discovery of 3,400-year-old ceramic ballplayer figurines above a ball court in Oaxaca, Mexico; It is unclear whether the figures were antique action figures or whether they had a ceremonial purpose.
Environmental DNA can also provide insight into much older environments than the 2,000-year-old Mayan ball court situation. In 2022, another team managed to reconstruct a lush, 2 million-year-old environment in Greenland from DNA found in the sediments of what is now a polar desert. These environmental samples contained the oldest DNA found to date. Other scientists are pushing the boundaries of environmental DNA even further by sequencing genetic material suspended in the air to determine which organisms are in a particular habitat.
As more eDNA exploration is conducted at Mayan sites—and other ancient sites that contain organic material—we are likely to gain a clearer, more dynamic picture of ancient life and rituals.
More: Archaeologists map nearly 500 Mesoamerican sites and identify distinct design patterns
For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.