The game is played in modern times as well: in the 2017 Mesoamerican Ballgame Tournament, held in Teotihuacan, Mexico, the team from Belize took home the title. The ballgame remained important to cultures throughout Mesoamerica, including the Mixtec and the Aztec, who flourished in southern and central Mexico, respectively, in the centuries immediately prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. 250–900) in the Maya area as well as among the Veracruz cultures of the Gulf Coast. Ballcourts and ballgame imagery increase drastically in the Classic Period (ca. A model of a ballcourt from Nayarit in West Mexico indicates the game was an important part of life as early as the Late Preclassic period (ca. The size of these balls corresponds to the size of ball used in the ballgame, although they could also represent ritual deposits. Additional evidence that may point to the early ballgame comes from the Gulf Coast of Mexico, where Ponciano Ortíz and María del Carmen Rodríguez discovered rubber balls at El Manatí dating to approximately 1600 B.C. Clark excavated a ballcourt dating to 1400 B.C. The earliest evidence for the ballgame comes from Paso de la Amada, Guatemala, where Warren Hill, Michael Blake, and John E. Information about the Mesoamerican ballgame comes from surviving ballcourts, ballgame artifacts and paraphernalia, and ballgame-related imagery and texts. These games share certain aspects, however, particularly their settings and symbolic functions. Mesoamerican peoples played many types of ballgames, with different rules and styles of play. Cultures throughout Mesoamerica played games using rubber balls, and the tradition extended to the Caribbean and the southwestern United States.

The game the Spanish witnessed in the Aztec region was just one manifestation of a long-lived and wide-ranging ballgame tradition in Mesoamerica.

Upon their arrival in central Mexico, they were so enamored with the Aztec ballgame that they sent a team of indigenous players to Spain to play before the court of Charles V. Before their arrival in the New World, the Spanish had never before seen games played with balls of rubber, a substance unknown in Europe.

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