Meso-American ball game revival

[svensson]

So, when I served down in Central America back in the day, this was just being discussed. It was a good idea waiting for the hieroglyphics to be translated [that had only just started too].

A group of Mexican 'practical anthropologists' have revived the Mayan version of the Meso American 'ball game'. For those of you interested in RQ for other settings, you might find this of interest.

[link to the BBC video article]

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by Nick Brooke
Clickbait subject line

[svensson]

Something else to consider...

That freaking ball can weigh as  much as 8 pounds [3.6 kg] solid, so imagine that hitting your elbows, hips and knees at competition speeds... OUCH! A medicine ball has more give than one of these things.

For those with the interest, here is the wikipedia article on the generalized 'ball game', though not the rules specific to Juego de Pelota.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame

Edited December 20, 2023 by svensson

[svensson]

Last thing.

Way back in the Age Before The Internet, I was a member of the SCA, the largest medieval reenactment group in the world. I was privileged to be acquainted with a Southern Californian Chicano-White couple, the Villenuevas. He was of Mexican heritage and dressed out as a Azteca jaguar knight named Mixtecuacoatl. She was of Mediterranean ancestry and dressed out an Elizabethan era Spanish dona.

Now his gear was *amazing*, ok? He had full jaguar helmet made of rawhide and a cougar's teeth. He hand-sewed a 'jaguar hide' suit using deer hide and horsehair [by 'hand sewn', I mean he sewed horse mane and tail hair as jaguar markings into a deer hide one at at time]. His knight's sword was a wood and obsidian macuahuitl and the obsidian was glued in place with animal glues. Even today I'm still gobsmacked by it.

And I'd be shorting La Senora de Bilbao if I didn't mention her incredible embroidery [in multiple time periods... she could do almost anything from Book of Kells Irish to Gothic Blackletter] and a magnificent dress she did blue velvet with almost 500 tiny pearls sewn into it.

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by svensson