38. Ceremonial Ballgame Belt (Mexico, AD 100-500)

Sports as Religion!
This large stone belt is the ceremonial version of a belt made of cloth or wicker which was worn, in Meso-America, in the oldest ball game known to history; it was a bit like soccer, only you apparently couldn’t kick the ball either, you had to bonk it with your hips. Oh, and the losing team were sacrificed to the gods. (Or was it the winning team?) If art has its origins in religion, than so does sport, and somehow the striving and communal accomplishment and chaos of these games developed as a metaphor for the religious understanding of these cultures, how they saw the workings of the universe. If you add that ultimate stake—one or the other of the teams will die—it is in fact a lot like life, isn’t it? That kind of blows your mind.

Philosophically, MacGregor’s interesting point here is about the role sport played in this Meso-American society and the role(s) it can play today. Which is, it’s hugely important to lots lots lots of people. Not me, perhaps, but I’ve given my life over to art, and so can imagine those for whom sport plays a similarly central role. In what other context do such large numbers of people come together, at one time and place, to concentrate together on something? Something esoteric, to be sure, the peregrinations of a rubber ball around a court, or whether or not a singer hits a high note. It’s probably only because the thing being concentrated on is so esoteric that so much attention can be focused. That is, in an election, or a bit of legislation, or the unveiling of a new product, we don’t all get together the same way to concentrate on what concerns us. Maybe it’s just the nature of drama.

In any event, games like this have been played in central America the longest, probably because they had rubber trees and figured out how to make rubber balls first! It is interesting to me that sport/recreation in Europe, before 1500, tended to be about hunting, or gladitorial games or bear-baiting, etc. And how quickly they took to soccer once they got it—how brilliantly, powerfully, it took its modern role at the center of huge numbers of men’s concept of what it means to be a man.