Now, a team of archaeologists have found evidence that the ancient Maya blessed their ball courts with ritual offerings, an indicator of how much sport meant to the Maya communities. In their new ...

At the site of an ancient Maya ball court, researchers have identified a bundle of ceremonial mind-altering plants—which may have been used as an offering to higher powers during the court’s ...

How This Mayan Legend Inspired a Deadly Ballgame In ancient Mayan lore, the world of the living was directly connected to the underworld: Xibalba. This belief was central to many facets of Mayan ...

In one graphic depiction on the walls of the monumental ninth-century Maya ball court at Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán, serpents and squash plants sprout from the neck of a kneeling, decapitated ...

Different towns have different rules, but here the aim is to get the ball to the other end of the court. One of the many things the ancient Maya are remembered for is their ball game, which they ...