>>18601942
Also forgot to mention
>the rubber ball they used was so hard and heavy players would occasionally get serious injuries while playing

I find it interesting that the ball game was truly ancient, but the wheel shaped goal seems to have been a relatively recent addition at the time of contact with europeans.

>>18601984
from what i understand, the actual goal of the game was probably to keep the ball in play and try to make the opponent fuck it up, the hoops were kind of just a bonus wherein the chances of actually getting the ball through were so low that actually doing it meant you won the match immediately
either that or the objective of the game became shooting the ball through the hoop just once

>>18601949
that's probably nonsense. they're bouncy when you make them fresh, use your brain man

>>18601984
relatively recent as in ~750 years?

>>18601942
i think that game might be bullshit because who could actually bump a heavy ass latex ball into a goal or keep it in play for more than like 15 bumps before you get tired or fuck up. it just doesnt seem interesting compared to lacrosse or pacolli or whatever

>>18602102
People still get injured in stuff like baseball and volleyball by getting hit with the ball sometimes, wouldn't surprise me if sports injuries were nothing new

>>18602236
There's literally not even a single chance of it not being real considering there are hundreds of depictions of it, entire surviving ballcourts, extensive mentions of it in both spanish and indigenous text and europeans literally saw it being played with their own eyes
And it was evidently interesting enough to literally become a part of their religion

>>18601942
>>get curious about it after it was shown yesterday on the 4cc final
>>do some research to see which side was actually sacrificed since some say it was the losers and others the winners
>>the answer seems to be: human sacrifice was not actually a part of the game itself, but rather the game may have occasionally gotten incorporated into sacrificial rituals; people could and did just play matches where nobody got killed recreationally all the time, with the game being an extremely popular pastime that basically the entire population engaged in
>>...which means, whoever got sacrificed likely just varied across time and space depending on the nature of the ritual
>>the main complaint the Spaniards had against the game beyond its ties to religion was the fact sports betting was rampant and people would often gamble their fucking lives away on ballgame outcomes
interesting tr—
>people would often gamble their fucking lives away on ballgame outcomes
holy shit. they would have loved /sp/

>>18602102
Ours are 90% air, theirs were +90% rubber.

It's the difference of being slapped with a balloon sword vs a horse cock dildo.

>>18602266
>>18602258
There are even surviving balls.

Also ball sports used to be very rough affairs. Like Tennis originally was a bare-hand sport played with a wooden ball.

>>18602284
>holy shit. they would have loved /sp/
Haha my first thought too

>>18602284
It's why i made this thread, i was expecting to read about an alien inscrutable culture that made a sport out of killing, but they were really just sports fans who even had to deal with the exact same problems we do

And even the fact they integrated the game into their fucked up religion was ultimately just a result of them loving it that much, which is a quite hecking wholesomerino when you think about it that way :) it's like if football became so popular bishops started hosting it in cathedrals before mass

>>18602236
It's basically just tennis/volleyball. It's simple enough that random normal people and even kids can play it, and deep enough that professional play looks different from what an average joe could pull off. I can see why it got popular