Handout picture released by the National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH) on May 20, 2013, showing an image of a player of a pre-Hispanic ball game, possibly dating back over 1,000 years in the State of Guerrero, Mexico.
Posted on 05/25/2013 5:50:34 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Villagers installing a water pipe in southwestern Mexico stumbled onto an ancient granite statue depicting a player from a pre-Hispanic ball game, the national anthropology institute said Monday.
The stone had been sliced at the neck, like a decapitation, and buried in a ritual that was common at the time, the National Anthropology and History Institute said in a statement.
There are indications that the 1.65-meter (5-foot-4) tall statue, which depicts a bow-legged ballplayer with his arms crossed, was built onto an I-shaped ball game field before it was buried and could be more than 1,000 years old.
Mesoamericans would paint objects in red and "kill" them by breaking them as offerings for rituals at the end of calendar cycles.
The monument was discovered in the pre-Hispanic site of Piedra Labrada, which includes five ancient ball fields in which teams battled to put a rubber ball through a circular stone by bouncing it on their hips. The statue may have been carved by the Mixtec indigenous group around the year 600.
Archeologist began to dig in the Piedra Labrada site more than a year ago and have since found 50 medium-sized buildings of up to five meters in height as well as around 20 sculptures ranging from snake heads to snails and humans with animal features.
The ball game fields along with temples and public squares show that Piedra Labrada was a "city with an important ritualistic role," the institute said.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Handout picture released by the National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH) on May 20, 2013, showing an image of a player of a pre-Hispanic ball game, possibly dating back over 1,000 years in the State of Guerrero, Mexico.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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Here’s one we can’t post on FR. Seems like a good one to ping for the Digest members.
Archaeologists uncover nearly 5,000 cave paintings in Burgos, Mexico
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/archaeologists-uncover-nearly-5000-cave-paintings-in-burgos-mexico-8629253.html
Archaeologist treats guests to 1,000-year-old recipes
http://www.sunad.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=28248
[snip] Of the 30 coprolites he analyzed, 17 reflected no field-grown foods. The remaining samples revealed eight with corn and the other five with corn and other domestic foods. At the sites where corn had been the most heavily ingested, such as the Hogup site, they also found greater nutritional stress. Maybe they figured out, and a little too late, that strictly farming was not good for their health — more nuts and berries were in order.
After 1150, they evidently switched primarily to a hunter-gatherer diet and were the better for it — their muscle mass increased and their nutrient stress decreased, as reflected in the Harris lines in teeth and skeletal robusticity based on muscle attachments, Riley said.
“It looks like people who were eating a lot of maize were actually probably the least healthy,” he said. “We see that a fair amount in hunter-gatherer versus agricultural populations. Hunter-gathers tend to have seasonal nutrition stress but they don’t have long-term nutritional deficiencies the same way agriculturalists tend to.” [/snip]
I certainly hope his retirement plan is more favorable. You just don’t know these days....
He is Venezuelan so retirement can by pretty risky with his money.
He’s got big gold hoop earrings just like an nfl receiver!
Is this documented fact or wild conjecture? Did the ancients have inflatable balls or were they bouncing solid rubber balls (bowling balls?)off their hips and into stone hoops?
Solid rubber balls.
How do we know he is a ball player and not a lwer or perhaps a doctor?
Given the big nse and fat lips, he looks Olmec to me, not Mayan
Neuticles?
He is Venezuelan so retirement can by pretty risky with his money....Has to spend it all on toilet paper, prolly.
I know Hugo Chavez had a history of keeping families as hostages simply be refusing to let them leave the country. They could live well, but they had to live there.
I imagine things haven’t changed much.
The popularity of these ball games was quite widespread. I can recall “ball courts” were found in several Arizona ruins dating from 800 AD to 1400AD. The religions were different apparently but the games were similar.
The real thing with earrings
OMG! He’s only got one ball?
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