31–40 of 63 posts
I really wish ancient sports would make a comeback. I would give an arm and leg to spectate at an ancient sports demo event. Sort of Renaissance fair meets Olympics vibe.
Howcome everything old we dig up get this "probably ritual use" stamp?
Every morning, the first thing I do after getting up is go to the bathroom. That is a ritual. Watching the football game every week--ritual. Making your cup of coffee in the morning--ritual.
The disconnect is that most people understand "ritual" to have a religious or supernatural component, which none of the examples I've given have. Archaeologists do not understand "ritual" to need this component either. Also note that it is easier to identify the commonality of an object and its associated context than it is to identify what the object is and much, much easier than identifying why it is used.
In the context of the Mesoamerican ball game, there is abundant evidence that it is a 1200-year-old version of the NFL, although the biggest difference from modern sportsball is that the players seem to be poorly paid (if at all) from their teams and are more heavily reliant on their sponsorship income.
I really wish ancient sports would make a comeback. I would give an arm and leg to spectate at an ancient sports demo event. Sort of Renaissance fair meets Olympics vibe.
Agreed, and more generally, I would love to know what life was like for these people. We have an advanced civilization that was almost totally wiped out. Millions of people living their lives independently of western civilization. I’ve toyed with the idea of plotting the era and location of popular TV and movie narratives. I think you’d find that most of them are very narrowly focused on a handful of places and times…
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“Ritual use” is a term of art in archaeology. It refers to any object whose survival/economic use is not readily apparent. Basically, anything that isn’t a basic tool (and many things that are tools if they’re decorated) are considered ritual objects. It doesn’t imply any religious purpose. Lots of what people do in life is composed of rituals. Morning coffee ritual, for example.
It is beyond ridiculous at this point, and serves to make people not take archeology seriously anymore. Where's the shame in admitting they don't know what an object was for? And a coffee maker is not for ritual use, it is for making coffee.
They very often do know what the object is used for. It just doesn't have any economic/survival significance. For example, children's toys are labelled ritual objects.
This sort bulk classification via jargon exists elsewhere in science. For example, astronomers refer to all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium as metals. Should we ridicule astronomers for not knowing basic chemistry? Or should we accept that different fields have terms of art/jargon which are very useful for communicating among colleagues and are not intended to compete with the general usage of those words?
Interesting that it was found at Chichen Itza, where millions of people visit a year. An escavation was started there to go even deeper than the pyramid base, but that was paused due to lack of funding. Now you just see a moat on one side that hints at what lies beneath. The tour guide had said that the pyramid is actually constructed on fill above a sink hole.
Interesting that it was found at Chichen Itza, where millions of people visit a year. An escavation was started there to go even deeper than the pyramid base, but that was paused due to lack of funding. Now you just see a moat on one side that hints at what lies beneath. The tour guide had said that the pyramid is actually constructed on fill above a sink hole.
The Yucatán Peninsula has limestone shelves, as the entire area was a sea floor in primordial times. Holes in these shelves that provide access to an enormous aquifer are called cenote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote
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The Yucatán Peninsula has limestone shelves, as the entire area was a sea floor in primordial times. Holes in these shelves that provide access to an enormous aquifer are called cenote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote
Bathing inside a cenote is an out of this world experience
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The incessant commercialization is a limiting factor as well. Getting rid of uniform logos and going back to the days where all the competitors were naked and covered in oil would certainly boost interest.
It sounds like they had uniforms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Ballgame > The usual dress for players is known from iconographic and figural findings. These show leather protection mainly at the hips and the chest, but sometimes also at the knees and the arms, though very seldom at the feet. The clothing was used to protect against the impact of the ball. The protected parts of the body were used to strike th…
Howcome everything old we dig up get this "probably ritual use" stamp?
https://onlinecampus.fcps.edu/media2/Social_Studies/WHGII_20...