A hiccup - and a lecture

kw: travel notes, conferences

I was traveling with wife and son for a few days, and got away just one blog post before the laptop began crashing every time it tried to connect to WiFi. Now that it is working again, I have some catching up to do.

We were in California for the college graduation of my brother's daughter. The day of our arrival, my brother, an archaeologist, was speaking at a conference on Mayan culture. His topic was the ball game Ulama, and its possible significance as a passion play.

Here he is speaking on the significance of the details of this stone ring. He made the case that it represents the eye of a macaw (large parrot), which had great religious significance to the Maya. The written and carved classical Maya language used a great variety of abbreviation techniques. When a scribe had the leisure to do so, he would depict the head of a macaw fully, somewhat stylized. There were several more brief forms, and the most brief was a stylized eye ring with the "dots" representing the nubbly skin around a macaw's eye.

If the ring in the Ulama court represents a macaw's eye, then the game over which it is watching could represent a myth of creation and rebirth. My brother thinks this is why the winner, not the loser, of the game was sacrificed. Just as a Christian passion play is expected to end with the death of Jesus—you don't root for him to "get away"—, because He is going to be raised from the dead, so the Mayan game ended in the death of one or more members of the winning team, and their blood was then used ritualistically to invoke life from the gods. 

The modern version of the game is played, not for life or death, but for status, among the cluster of Mayan communities that still play. I was surprised to learn that scholars no longer think that the goal of the game was to put the ball through the hole in the ring. Many ancient ball courts have no such rings, but all are "watched over" by various figures, usually some kind of depiction of the macaw. The game, like its modern version, was probably played more like volleyball, to induce the opposing team to miss.

It was interesting to sit with him after the lecture as his colleagues came by to either support or question his thesis. It was a quiet way to spend the time after a long day of travel.