A baseball player may tap his helmet three times before stepping up to the plate, and an Argentina supporter may burn incense in front of a portrait of Diego Maradona as the Albiceleste kick off. Now, a team of archaeologists have found evidence that the ancient Maya blessed their ball courts with ritual offerings, an indicator of how much sport meant to the Maya communities.
In their new paper, published today in PLoS One, the researchers describe “the discovery of a special ritual deposit” underneath a ball court platform in the Maya city of Yaxnohcah, in modern-day Mexico, near the northern border of Guatemala. Environmental DNA analysis of the deposit revealed the presence of medicinal and hallucinogenic plants, indicating that they were buried for a ritual purpose.
“I think the fact that these four plants which have a known cultural importance to the Maya were found in a concentrated sample tells us it was an intentional and purposeful collection under this platform,” said Eric Tepe, a botanist at the University of Cincinnati and co-author of the paper, in a university release.
Mesoamerican ball games were of huge social, political, and spiritual importance. The rules for the ball game likely varied across geographies and over time, but as described by Gizmodo in 2020:
This Mesoamerican athletic contest involved a solid rubber ball, and it was played on narrow brick courts enclosed by angled stone walls. The rules aren’t exactly known, and the sport varied from region to region (including the size and configuration of the courts), but the general goal was to keep the ball in constant motion, similar to modern sports like volleyball and racquetball. But instead of using hands, feet, or racquets, the players used their torsos and hips to keep the heavy rubber ball in play, which they did by bouncing it off the slanted sidewalls.
As reported by Gizmodo at the time, about 2,300 probable ballcourts have been identified to-date in modern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. It was the beautiful game of its day; the oldest-known ballcourt is the 3,670-year-old Paso de la Amada in Chiapas, Mexico.
Environmental DNA analysis entails taking a sample of an environment and extracting genetic information from it, giving researchers a snapshot of the organic material in the area.
Environmental DNA of several plants, including Ipomoea corymbosa, Capsicum, Hampea trilobata, and Oxandra lanceolata—all of which have medicinal properties, were identified from the sample. The latter two plants have known ceremonial purposes, the team wrote, while the former two have associations with divination rituals. I. corymbosa (xtabentum in Mayan, or ololiuhqui to the Aztecs) has hallucinogenic properties, and according to the researchers, its presence at the ball court is the first time it’s been described in a Maya archaeological context.
“In general, the consumption of hallucinogenic substances played a vital role in the rituals carried out by Maya kings and high priests because it empowered them to receive the energy of the gods,” the researchers wrote. While there was no evidence that the athletes in the ball game itself consumed such hallucinogens before or while balling, given the stakes at play they probably hoped the energy of the gods was on their side.
“Whatever the intent of the Maya petitioners, it seems clear that some kind of divination or healing ritual took place at the base of the Helena ballcourt complex during the Late Preclassic Period,” the study authors concluded.
Material culture, which reveals details about the substantial earth and stoneworks that constructed the courts, is not a new area of study. In 2020, researchers announced the discovery of 3,400-year-old ceramic ballplayer figurines above a ballcourt in Oaxaca, Mexico; whether the figures were ancient action figures or had a ceremonial purpose is not clear.
Environmental DNA can also shed light on much more ancient environments than the 2,000-year-old situation at the Maya ball court. In 2022, a different team was able to reconstruct a lush 2-million-year-old environment in Greenland from DNA found in the sediments of what is now a polar desert. Those environmental samples held the oldest DNA yet found. Other scientists are pushing the limits of environmental DNA further, by sequencing genetic material floating through the air to determine which organisms are in a given habitat.
As more eDNA exploration of Maya sites is conducted—and indeed, of other ancient sites bearing organic material—we’ll likely get a clearer, more dynamic portrait of ancient life and its rituals.
More: Archaeologists Map Nearly 500 Mesoamerican Sites and See Distinct Design Patterns
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