Rubber balls used in famous Maya game contained ashes of cremated rulers, archaeologists claim

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Rubber balls used in famous Maya game contained ashes ofcremated rulers, archaeologists claim

Maya peoplecremated their rulers and used the ashes to help make rubber balls that wereused in ballgames, an archaeologist has claimed. The researcher and his teambelieve they've found evidence of this practice while excavating the Maya cityof Toniná, in southern Mexico.

Researchersrefer to it as the "ballgame" as its rules and name may have changedover time.  It was often played by two teamsusing a rubber ball on a capital I-shaped court. The game was popular acrossthe Americas for thousands of years. Numerous ball courts have been found inancient Maya cities, including Toniná.

The theoryabout the rubber balls was put forward by Juan Yadeun Angulo, an archaeologistat Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. In 2020, Angulo'steam discovered a 1,300-year-old crypt in Toniná beneath a pyramid called theTemple of the Sun. The crypt held the remains of about 400 vessels thatcontained organic materials, including ash, charcoal and natural rubber, theteam said in a Spanish language statement(opens in new tab).

'Some werecautiously optimistic that the claim suggesting human ash was used to makerubber balls could be accurate. "It certainly is plausible that humanremains were included in rubber balls," William Duncan, a professor ofbiological anthropology at East Tennessee State University, told Live Sciencein an email. "Human remains were used in an incredibly wide array ofcontexts and practices for the ancient Maya."

Indeed,"such a practice is certainly consistent with the complex and oftenprotracted mortuary rituals of the Maya that have been documented,"Gabriel Wrobel, an anthropology professor at Michigan State University, toldLive Science in an email.

However,even if human remains were used to make the rubber balls, "it is veryunlikely that they would be the remains of rulers, per se," JamesFitzsimmons, an anthropology professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, toldLive Science in an email, adding that the remains of war captives were morelikely.

Otherscholars expressed strong doubts about the findings. "Glancing through theinformation I found, there is no actual evidence presented that rubber ballswere crafted to include the cremated remains of Maya rulers," SusanGillespie, an anthropology professor at the University of Florida, told LiveScience in an email. "I didn't read that they found rubber balls andanalyzed them for these inclusions."

All of theexperts agreed that more information is needed, with some declining to commenton the finds until a scientific report is released.