MÉRIDA, Yucatan – This weekend will be the Mexican selective to determine the team that will participate in the Fifth World Cup of the Ancestral Sport of Pelota Maya, to be held in December of this year.
The selective will take place this Saturday May 6 and Sunday May 7 in Dzibalché, Campeche; for which three Yucatecan teams will travel; one from the San Pedro Chimay police station in Mérida, another from the municipality of Chapab and another from Umán.
The team that wins this weekend will have the mission of representing the country in December in Belize, where a good participation is expected from Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, the United States and Mexico.
From December 7 to 10, the international event will be held in Belize with 18 teams in total, including women’s teams.
Mayan ball game scoreboard found
Just in April of this year, researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) located an element with Maya hieroglyphic inscription in the archaeological zone of Chichen Itza, which would be a stone marker of the pre-Hispanic ball game, dating from the Terminal Classic or Early Postclassic period (750-1050 A.D.).
According to INAH, the inscription is a stone marker of a circular ball game, which presents in bas-relief a glyphic band surrounding two characters dressed as ball players.
The relevance of the finding lies in the fact that it is a sculptural element that preserves its complete glyphic text.
Mayan ball game
The ball game has been one of the most emblematic and well-known rituals of the Mayan world. According to versions of researchers, it consists of recreating a battle between the forces of darkness and light represented by two teams that had to face each other in a religious ritual of regeneration. This ritual was considered an integral part of the existence of the Mayan civilization.
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