It's THE Game
Cartoony Introductions
As a 90s kid growing up in America, Road to El Dorado (2000 - I was 8) was probably my introduction to the world of the Maya. I'm not going to dive into the movie much if at all [if I can help it], but when I actually learned about the history, the mythology, and the art of the area, I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of research clearly went into the art and the backgrounds and even hints in the story that are made obvious when reading the mythology. It's not perfect, and it can still culturally insensitive to a still living group of people; I'm sorry, but I still enjoy watching this movie.
Anyway, the main story is based on Miguel and Tulio pretending that they are gods to scam the people. The whole white people are gods thing is really stupid [a trope that as a white person I absolutely hate... why would whiteness make anyone more powerful? Stupid.] a trope that was radically spread by Cortez after landing in the new world and (gawd forbid) being welcomed (gasp, hospitality). But even if 100% true, the basis may be in the myths themselves, in which gods are set to return from across the seas to the East, the heavens, after going the the Underworld (Xibalba, the West). This lies within the animated story along with the white savior trope, in which our two main white male characters are misidentified as the Hero twins and in one scene they have to play the significantly culturally recognized ballgame, known as Pok-a-Tok, which the original hero twins invented (Little, n.d.).
The Walls are too High
Screenshots (Chief Tannabok's Warriors) and overview of the ballcourt and a GIF captured from the movie Road to El Dorado, found on: Paul Astell's movie blog, Fandom Disney Versus Non-Disney Villains Wiki, and MakeaGIF.com.
This movie example of the game is very much overblown, but gods can do anything I guess, but the human warriors they are playing against wouldn't stand a chance [and not b/c they're posing as the literal gods who invented the game] either. The high vertical wall ballcourt is most likely modelled on the ritualistic ball court at Chichen Itza in northern Yucatan, Mexico. Pictures down below are for comparison.
Chichen Itza's massive ballcourt
The hoop on the right side (when entering from the open side.
Overview of some of the carvings depicting the mythology behind the game.
Carvings illustrating (left to right) a warrior in armour holding a decapitated head facing ball with a skull inside it in front of a decapitated man on his knees. Snakes are erupting from the man's neck, these snakes represent blood.
According to (Braswell, 2013) this massive ballcourt was not played on, it was a symbolic/ritualistic arena where special events would take place, such as kings from distant cities coming to be crowned. This overarching hierarchy brought the separate Maya communities together under a single religion and into the large Maya Empire, especially in the Classic Maya period and beyond. In the case of the normal version that people could actually ritually play out the story of the Hero Twins on, that smaller, slanted version looks like the examples below.
Oxkintok, Yucatán, Mexico
Edzná, Campeche, Mexico
Uaxactun, Petén, Guatemala
Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico
Yaxchilán, Chiapas, Mexico
Teotenango, Toluca, Central Mexico
Monté Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico
Xochicalco, Miacatlán, Morelos, Mexico
Yagul, Oaxaca, Mexico
The above are examples of reconstructed ballcourts from sites in Mexico and Guatemala that I took while on study abroads in 2013 and 2014.
Tikal - Tikal overview (view from necropolis towards Temple 1)
Uxmal - Uxmal (overview)
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Myth of the Hero Twins and their role in Creation
The Popol Vuh [aka Book of Counsel] was written by the K’iche Maya of Guatemala on paper bark during the colonial period (Foster and Mathews 2005: 188; Drury 2002: 253; Coe 1999: 72; Martin and Grube 2000: 15, 130, 221). This book reiterates the Maya oral traditions and describes the Maya people’s creation myth and cultural history (Coe 2005: 65; Coe 1999: 72, 99-100, 200, 220-2, 226, 249, 268).
One version tells of a couple of grandfather and grandmother creator gods named Xpiyacoc and Xmucane who originally fashioned the Popol Vuh from a watery empty space or void. Even though the universe had already been through a series of creations and destructions, each subsequent new world was imperfect. The gods had created the divided universe and filled the earth with birds, animals, fish, reptiles, and forests to sustain themselves, but the gods need more than nourishment. The gods also needed worship, which animals couldn't provide so, therefore, they began creating humankind (Foster and Mathews 2005: 184). The task of creating humankind was full of issues though. The gods initially tried to create humans from clay and wood but these beings were doomed because they could not offer the gods what they desired, "which was worship, admiration, and blood" (Coe 2005: 65). Because early tests were unsuccessful and the gods still required offerings and prayer to sustain them, they tried more "human" experiments.
Skipping ahead in time, towards the end of the creation cycle, a great flood covered the entire world. The sky fell on the earth, and the stars, the moon, and the sun were extinguished. This caused darkness to fall and from this darkness "an arrogant and hideous bird-monster declared and proclaimed himself the newborn sun and moon" (Coe 2005: 65). Next and not necessarily connected, the grandmother creator god, Xmucane, gave birth to a pair of twins [not the hero twins]. One of the newborn twins was the maize god, Hun Hunahpu aka One Ajaw, and his brother Seven Hunahpu, according to Coe, (2005), was a mere double, companion, or reflection of Hun Hunahpu (Coe, 2005: 65; PenDragon, n.d.; Tedlock, 1996). In some versions of the myth Seven Hunahpu later married and fathered two sons named Hun Chuwen and Hun Batz (Coe, 2005). But, in others Seven Hunahpu had no children and "remained a boy" while Hun Hunahpu married and had four children; Hunahpu, Xbalanque, One Monkey, and One Artisan. Two of these were the Hero Twins; Hunahpu, Xbalanque (Tedlock, 1996; Brock, 2018), but they wouldn't actually be "born" until the story moves into the underworld.
According to Coe (2005: 65), further along in the creation story Hun Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu were extremely fond of, and very good at, playing a game of a ball, bouncing the rubber ball up and down all day (Zaccagnini, 2003: 17). The Lords of Xibalba, ‘The Place of Fright’ [the underworld], were annoyed and constantly enraged at all the noise from their upstairs neighbors. The lords of Xibalba, therefore, came up with a plan to trick and trap the twins by inviting them to play a game of ball against the lords (Tedlock, 1996). This worked and once they were trapped the lords inflicted a series of horrid tests and experiments upon the brothers in several different fear inducing chambers (Coe 2005: 65). Afterwards, the twins were sacrificed and the Maize God’s head, specifically, was hung from either a calabash or a cacao tree.
After some more time passed, one of the daughters of an underworld god walked under the tree and noticed the head of Hun Hunahpu hanging from it and it spoke to her (Coe 2005: 65; Tedlock, 1996). [Not sure what it said to convince her, but...] she raised up her hand and it spat on her causing her to become impregnated. Six months later the still pregnant daughter of the underworld lord was kicked out in disgrace, since she was carrying a child of the Maize god (Coe, 2005: 65). On the surface the creater-god-grandparent’s gave her shelter as they would also soon be the grandparents of her underworld children, the Hero Twins, named Hunahpu and Xbalanque (Coe, 2005: 65; Tedlock, 1996). They were blowgunners, hunters, ball players and tricksters. The Hero Twins' half brothers, Hun Batz and Hun Chuwen, were jealous of them and tricked them into becoming monkeys or monkey-men (Coe 2005: 65; Tedlock, 1996). The monkey-men half brothers were apparently later considered demi-gods and patrons of music, dancing, writing, carving, and in fact, all of the Maya arts; so that plan of 'revenge' or bringing them down to size didn't work out (Coe 2005: 65).
The Hero Twins worked to rid the world of monsters and incongruities, killing the bird-monster and two other monsters, which were a volcano and the creator of earthquakes (Coe, 2005: 66). And then the gods watched and waited for the Hero Twins to defeat the underworld gods of death and decay, which would allow the creator gods to receive the best materials to humankind out of (Foster and Mathews 2005: 184; Tedlock, 1996).
Like their father and uncle before them, they decided to play a ball game in the makeshift ball court. Again, such a ruckus was made on the underworld ceiling that the twins were summoned to the underworld and placed in the horrifying death chamber, but unlike their father and uncle they were able to turn the tables on the death lords by tricking them into playing the ballgame and defeated them (Coe 2005: 66). However, the Hero Twins knew they would suffer the same fate as their uncle and father before them, so, they committed suicide instead (Coe 2005: 66). Fortunately, the gods of the earth were saddened in the wake of their deaths so the Hero Twins were resurrected and promptly slayed the death lords and resurrected their father Hun Hunahpu the Maize God (Coe 2005: 65). With this victory the world tree [the ceiba] grew up from Xibalba; splitting the surface of the Earth in two, becoming a great new ballcourt, and the lifting up the sky giving the earthly gods a space and time to focus on creating the perfect human beings again, creating them out of a doughy mixture consisting of ground maize and blood who were the Maya and they were suitably grateful to the gods for their creation (Foster and Mathews, 2005: 184).
Many times that the game would be played was more of a historic/mythic reenactment of this momentous story. And, when human sacrifice was involved, as depicted in the carving of skull racks, it would be done in the most religious and political way (Zender, 2004).
(Figures from Zender, 2004).
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Where the Game Was Played
But, as one could see, it wasn't just the myth that spread. "[T]hey appear outside the Maya area at Teotihuacan, El Tajin, Tenochtitlan, and in various central Mexican codices [...] which began at the Olmec site of La Venta, [...] with the Maya serving as the prime example. Elements of this cosmo-political pattern were so widespread [...] that this overall pattern served as the ideological foundation of Mesoamerican civilization from the time of the Olmec until the coming of the Spaniards." (Gutierrez, 1996). From the Olmec heartland in Oaxaca, and expanding south-eastward through Chiapas (De Montmollin, 1997) southern Mexico, down through Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and to Belize, the ballcourts show up everywhere (Healey, 1992; Schultz, K., Gonzalez, J., & Hammond, N. 1994; Chase, 2016). Influencing various intertwining local cultures, including, but not limited to, the Mixtec, Zapotec, Classic Veracruz, Xochicalco, and Toltec all had ballcourts in their cities of various sizes, but with generally the same I-shape (Quirarte, 1975: 205-210).
Classic I-shape ball court in Cihuatan site, El Salvador (Photo by: samuel- san miguel: juego de pelota).
One of the ballcourts at Xochicalco. The characteristic I-shape, the rings set above the apron at center court. On the equinox, the setting sun shines through the ring. (Uriarte, 2006:23).
Basic ballcourt terminology, but not all ballcourts have all these surfaces (Madman2001's work).
Cross sections of some of the more typical ballcourts. Jacinto Quirarte has classified Copan, Uxmal, and Xochicalco at Type I, Monte Alban as Type II, Chichen Itza as Type III, and Toluquilla as Type IV (Madman2001's work).
And even the earliest versions had these identifiable traits (Blomster, & Chávez, 2020). This is also why it is thought, by archaeologists specializing in the region, that the game Hohokam is the Southwestern Indigenous Americans' version of the ballgame, where they are found mostly in Arizona (Odenkirk, 1971: 215; Kohler, Fish, S. K., Fish, P. R., & Erickson, 1992: 288; Witze, 2018).
Early ballcourts in Mesoamerica - Comparison of early ballcourt cross sections (to scale), with earliest on top, with plan views (not to scale) from Paso de la Amada and La Laguna (Blomster, & Chávez, 2020; Blake, 2011; Carballo, 2016).
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Silly-ish facts(?)
In the movie too the stelae outside the entrance depicts the Twins riding Quetzalcoatl (the "tl" is pronounced ' 'k ' by the way) or Kukukan, as the Maya called him, the Flying Serpent God. And in the lower right corner is a maiden offering the Gods a head. Obviously this is suppose to reflect what happens later in the scene and kick-starts the story. But this demonstration of research by the artists is neat because this feels reflexive of the daughter of one of the Lords of Xibalba returning the head of the Hero Twins' father after they were brought back to life.
Not all the mythology is as reflexive or true to life, as morality changes with time. The human sacrifice thing was likely not as despised as an action, at least not in all contexts. Though I'm sure it would have been much more popular after conquering foes on an actual battlefield. ("The Maya Codices - Archaeology Magazine". www.archaeology.org).
The gods were not shown to bleed in the Mayan's artwork. Whenever snakes are depicted snake-ing from a body, generally human sacrifices, it means they are showing gushing blood. It was just that blood was/is extremely important, it is “life-force” or chu 'lel after all, and bloodletting (piercing the penis for men and running a thorny rope through the tongue for women) was a normal thing for royalty to do (Haines, Willink, & Maxwell, 2008; Houston & Stuart, 2015).
This may not be true [professor may have been pulling our collective legs], but...
If a player does make a point that wins the game and all the audience would run away, because they would've had to give the winners anything they wanted from what the rich audience members were carrying (Braswell, 2013).
I still am not sure whether the losers were sacrificed or the victors. Cause as a sacrifice the winners would have been heroes and more valuable, like when the Hero Twins killed themselves. But if a king was playing for ritualistic reasons, and he would obviously win [I assume], respectful of the Heroes, he wouldn't have been actually killed. Plus if the above point was true, at least sometimes, then the rich who were watching the game wouldn't have to lose any money.
Play more games, we might be able to change society.
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More Interest?
Chase, A. S. (2016). Districting and urban services at Caracol, Belize: Intrasite boundaries in an evolving Maya cityscape. Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology, 13, 15-28.
Fields, Virginia M. [Ed] (1991). Olmec Bloodletting: An Iconographic Study. In ‘Sixth Palenque Round Table. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman.
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Tiesler, Vera and Cucina, Andrea. (2007). New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society. Springer. New York.
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