Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Players knock a heavy solid rubber ball up and down a narrow pitch.
The finals of a revived 3,000-year-old ball game have been played in the Mexican city of Teotihuacan
Organisers have been trying to bring back the game, known as Ullamaliztli in Mexico, because of its ancient cultural and religious significance.
The game was played across Central America before being banned by the Spanish conquistadors.
The tournament, only the second since 2006, is being played by ten teams from across Mexico.
According to ancient texts the ball game was seen as a struggle between light and darkness and provided the energy to keep humanity going.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption One of the best preserved ball courts can be found - with stone rings to throw the ball through - in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula
Today the game is played by teams of seven players, who knock a heavy solid rubber ball up and down a narrow pitch, using their hips rather than their feet.
Giant ball courts can still be seen in ruins across the region.
In ancient times losers of the game were often sacrificed to the Gods, but this year organisers opted for a knockout tournament instead.
Lil_miss_feisty on April 16th, 2017 at 15:38 UTC »
This must be the game they played in the movie Road to El Dorado: https://youtu.be/8pF03BXxUSY
DetectiveRayCameron on April 16th, 2017 at 15:03 UTC »
I thought that they really don't have a good understanding of how the game was actually played and how or if the elevated rings were used. I see in the video that they just did away with the pesky ring aspect, so then is this really a resurrection of the ancient game or just a different game altogether?
Mictlantecuhtli on April 16th, 2017 at 12:14 UTC »
I am happy to see more and more people in Mexico wanting to learn to play and actually play the Mesoamerican ballgame. I was kind of hoping the article would go into some more depth on the topic such as how a variant of the game survived in Sinaloa called Ulama. What does annoy me is the article's repetition of the myth that people were sacrificed, winners or losers, for playing the ballgame. While there is a ton of imagery and iconography in Mesoamerica related to the ballgame, with some imagery related to sacrifice, there is little physical evidence that people were ever sacrificed for winning or losing a game. Being a ballplayer carried an immense amount of prestige and status within many Mesoamerican cultures. We see this in imagery from all over. What we do not see is a lot of imagery of sacrificing ballplayers outside of a mythological context. Some ballcourts may have friezes depicting said sacrifice, but they allude to stories and myths of the past like the Hero Twins in the Popol Vuh. An analog could be the depiction of Jesus on the cross. Most churches do not nail someone to a cross every Sunday as part of their normal worship.