If you thought soccer could get rough, check out the ball game Mesoamericans liked to play
Winning a grueling game of Ulama back in pre-Columbian Mexico or Central America could be a mixed blessing. When these ball players found themselves in a "sudden death" situation, they were facing something a little more serious than a slew of penalty kicks. According to Thomas Seligman, director of the Stanford Art Gallery, which is currently featuring an exhibit on Ulama, some scholars are still not sure whether it was the winners or the losers who were sacrificed by decapitation at the conclusion of this ancient Mesoamerican ball game, a kinder and gentler form of which still exists in remote parts of Mexico.
Seemingly rich in religious significance, Ulama was a bruising soccer-like game played with a hard rubber ball a little larger than a softball. Spanish explorers, who described the 16th-century version of the game scholars are most familiar with, were amazed to see that the small, hard ball bounced. Players scored by hitting the ball--probably without use of the hands--through a small stone ring. A total of 1,200 massive ball courts have been excavated throughout Mesoamerica (Mexico, much of Central America and the southwestern United States).
The first ball courts date to about 600 B.C., but clay figurines and stone effigies have been found that suggest the game is much older.
On loan to the Stanford Art Gallery from the National Museum of the American Indian (part of the Smithsonian Institution) are many of these stone effigies and terra cotta figures. "Ulama: Game of Life and Death in Early Mesoamerica" is on display at the Art Gallery through Oct. 2. The exhibit runs concurrently with "Around the World: Pictures for the Armchair Tourist." (See accompanying story.)
According to James Fox, professor of anthropology at Stanford, there are almost no aspects of the game that are fully understood.
"For example, where was the audience?" Fox asks. "Where did they sit? The early ball courts didn't seem to make many provisions for audiences. And who was the audience? And was it always a religious event, or did it sometimes just have sport-like aspects? Also, the courts throughout Mesoamerica are quite unlike each other. They are similar in layout, but differ quite a bit in size. This would imply that there probably wasn't a lot of traveling from place to place to play the game because there would be quite a home-court advantage."
Much of what scholars do understand about the game comes from the excavation of stone replicas of Ulama game paraphernalia: the yugos, or yokes, U-shaped "harnesses" worn high on the chest or under the armpits during the game; hachas, stone effigies often carved in the shape of a human or animal head; and palmas, which were worn tucked into the front of the yoke, projecting vertically from the chest.
Some items, such as the enigmatic "padlock stones," remain an almost complete mystery. Because of the apparent wear on the handles, and relief carvings of life and death images, these padlock-shaped stones are presumed to be associated with the game; however, they do not appear in any works of art that show Ulama paraphernalia in use.
Although some scholars used to think these stone effigies were actually used to play Ulama, it is now agreed that the yokes, for example, which weigh up to 40 pounds, were far too cumbersome to actually wear. Rather, these surviving stone reproductions likely had a ritual or decorative function.
The actual Ulama gear, says Seligman, was probably made of wood and leather, and would have deteriorated rapidly in the hot climes. A few rubber balls have been found throughout Mesoamerica, most of them in the sacred cenotes, or water-filled caves.
When the world was a bigger place
Young Leland Stanford Jr. was just 15 when he wrote his thoughtful letters home from Europe in 1884. In great detail, he described the silk industry in Lyon and a vineyard he'd visited in Bordeaux. Like most sons of privilege in this era, Leland was on the Grand Tour, taking in the culture and class of the Old World, capping off his pre-university education with his second journey through the Continent.
His letters, on display as part of the Stanford Art Gallery's current tribute to 19th-century travel, are made all the more profound by the fact that they are among his last correspondences before he contracted typhus in Italy and died soon after.
The rigors and magic of pre-jumbo jet journeys are conveyed at the Art Gallery through drawings, prints, photographs, letters and excerpts from travel writings by some of the greatest writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries--Mark Twain, Henry James and Edith Wharton, to name a few.
"Around the World" is on display in conjunction with "Ulama" through Oct. 2.
Before the early 19th century and the advent of the railroad, travel, whether for adventure or education, was the domain of the upper class. Aristocrats often journeyed with their own artists, who would record the famous sites with paint and pen.
By the mid-19th century, though, the middle class was more and more able to experience the pleasures and surprises of traveling abroad. By the middle of the century, many could record their experiences with the new art of photography.
Perhaps most interesting to a late 20th-century observer of 19th-century travel is the unabashed chauvinism of some of those who ventured forth into the world. After all, "multiculturalism" and "cultural sensitivity" were not exactly catch-phrases of the era.
One Frenchman with the lofty appellation Amedee Charles-Henri, Comte de Noe, made a series of sketches of the people of the countries he visited, each one more disparaging than the previous. He compared the Irish to pigs, given their propensity for sharing their living quarters with their animals. He called the Scots "mountain goats."
Of the denizens of North Africa, Eugene Delacroix wrote: "We notice a thousand things in which they are lacking, but their ignorance is the foundation of their peace and happiness. Can it be that we have reached the end of what a more advanced civilization can produce?"
Mostly, though, these 19th-century words and images offer a glimpse back to a world that was infinitely larger, less homogeneous, than the interdependent, computer- and television-connected family of nations of today. A trip to the exotic Orient was tantamount to a visit to another planet, and a visit to Stonehenge could still involve a solitary trek out to Salisbury Plain.
At the same time, the organized tours were beginning to organize, and the hordes were ready to descend on the landmarks of the world. In 1887, Mark Twain commented on one of the less agreeable aspects of an ever-growing population of world travelers: "One might swear that all the John Smiths and George Wilkinsons, and all the other pitiful nobodies between Kingdom Come and Baalbec would inscribe their poor little names upon the magnificent ruins, and would add the town, the country and state they came from."
Ulama and Around the World
Where: Stanford Art Gallery
When: Through Oct. 2; open Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat. and Sun. 1-5 p.m.; docent tours of "Ulama" at 3 p.m. Saturdays; docent tours of "Around the World" at 12:15 p.m. Thursdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays
Cost: Free
Information: 723-417 (recording); 723-3469 (tours); 725-0462 (museum staff)
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