A U-shaped stone yoke from Veracruz, a carved copy of the belt worn in the ballgame
Yoke, 600-900 CE
Marked Paso de la Amada

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Mesoamerican ballgame

For more than three thousand years, people in Mexico and Central America played a fast game with a heavy rubber ball, hit with the hips. Courts were built in almost every city, and a version, ulama, is still played.

Place
Paso de la Amada · Copán · Chichén Itzá · SinaloaThe Americas
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
5 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IPaso de la Amada, the first court
  2. IIRubber: the first bouncing balls
  3. IIICourts in every city
  4. IVThe game and the gods
  5. VUlama today

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Warren Hill
  • Manuel Aguilar-Moreno

Objects

  • Rubber balls from El Manatí
  • Ballplayer figurines
  • Stone yokes

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1650 BC to now. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?