Science & Culture

Macuilli Tlachtli/Cinco deportes Mexicanos/Five Mexican Sports/Cinq Sports Mexicains, Raziel García Arroyo, Mexico, 1969.

From the book's Preface by Antonio Rodríguez:

Religion and spiritual exercises tending to elevate man above his own precarious earthly existence dominated life in the Valley of the Anahuac, converting him, through penitence and sacrifice, into a particle of divinity.

But time remained, also, for "disinterested" poetry, composed to provoke delight or to make life more beautiful, as well as for games and sports.

Apart from the games that have come down to us from antiquity, such as the ulama, still practiced with major or minor variations in Sinaloa and other regions of the Republic, there are numerous accounts that tell us about them.

Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, to whom we must refer as an inexhaustible source of information, and the texts upon which the Franciscan friar based his observations, supply the researcher with first class material on the subject.

No less important are the striking clues left to us--on the smooth surfaces of walls, in the drawings of the codices, in the clay of figurines, and in the stone of large structures--by the inhabitants of Mesoamerica regarding their games and sports.

Download the book:  macuilli_tlachtli_2.pdf