What was the Maya ball game, and did the losers really die?

The Maya ball game was a ritual sport played with a heavy rubber ball, and the losers did not usually die: human sacrifice joined the game late and only in some cases. The game is very old. It probably began before 2000 BC in the low tropical zones where rubber trees grow, though nobody knows exactly when or where. A modernized version, ulama, is still played by Indigenous peoples of Mexico in some places.

In the most common theory, players struck the ball with their hips. The ball was solid natural rubber and weighed as much as 9 pounds, and the game could be brutal. Even without sacrifice there were often serious injuries, and the Spanish chronicler Diego Durán reported that some bruises were so severe that they had to be lanced open. Nobody knows the exact rules, but judging from ulama they were probably similar to racquetball, where the aim is to keep the ball in play.

The game also carried deep meaning. It had important ritual aspects, and major formal games were held as ritual events, yet it was also played casually by children. The Popol Vuh's twin myth makes the game a symbol of warfare intimately connected to the themes of fertility and death, and courts were considered portals to the underworld.

The grim part is real but late. The link between human sacrifice and the ballgame appears rather late in the archaeological record, no earlier than the Classic era. In Maya art, captives are often shown, and it is assumed, not proved, that they were sacrificed after losing a rigged ritual ballgame.