(piano music)
- [Narrator 1] We're in the American Museum
of Natural History staring at some of the most
magnificent objects I've ever seen.
These are from ancient Veracruz.
They're known in a colloquial sense as yokes
although they have nothing to do
with oxen and tilling the field.
- [Narrator 2] The yoke actually comes from
this idea that they held down sacrificial victims
which is absolutely not the case.
But, they're so stunning, people have always
wanted to know what they meant.
- [Narrator 1] In Veracruz there is
no natural deposit of this green stone
and so this would have had to been imported
at enormous cost through treacherous terrain.
Imagine how difficult it would've been
to take a boulder of greenstone,
this incredibly valuable material,
and import it into Veracruz.
- [Narrator 2] These were only held by the most
important political and religious leaders
in classic Veracruz, and in fact
they were very proud of having these.
And when we find burials of nobles,
it is not uncommon for them to be buried
with a few objects and their yoke.
- [Narrator 1] Well, look at the
technical facility that went into carving this.
It is stunning.
You see these broad, muscular volumes
and then this fine, much flatter relief carving.
- [Narrator 2] The very broad forms
define the major motif which we believe
is a frog or a toad, with eyes,
a tongue, the forelegs, and the hind legs.
And then interspersed inside those forms
are these incredibly delicate incisions,
as if someone's almost taking a brush.
It's really almost calligraphic.
And the classic Veracruz people
inherit that monumental simple forms from the Olmec.
But this delicate, calligraphic line
is their own invention.
- [Narrator 1] It is as if the broad forms are sculpture
and then there's drawing within that.
And it's really drawn out by the fact that
cinnabar was used, that's the red,
to highlight those recessed lines.
- [Narrator 2] Many, many objects
had cinnabar rubbed into the light incisions
to highlight the virtuosity, certainly.
- [Narrator 2] And cinnabar is
a dangerous material, it's mercury.
- [Narrator] Exactly, so you have cinnabar
used for two things in classic Veracruz.
One is rubbing into these lines
to get the viewer to look at them,
and the other is, they would coat
bones of ancestors in cinnabar.
- [Narrator 2] How did people
in ancient Veracruz view the frog or the toad?
Why is that association important?
- [Narrator 1] It's water.
Especially the border between water and land.
Any sort of swampy situation,
and there's a lot of that in Veracruz.
Frogs, they're the beings that
inhabit both land and water.
And water, for many Mesoamerican peoples,
but for classic Veracruz definitely,
also had to do with the underworld
and the land of the dead and
where you went when you were buried.
- [Narrator 2] So this idea that one can
trespass across the boundaries between life and death.
And that's especially important
when we think about this object
in relation to the ball game.
- [Narrator 1] Exactly.
The ball game itself was one of those places
where the supernatural and our world could meet.
- [Narrator 2] We're not talking about
baseball or football or soccer,
as we think of it in the modern game.
These were ritual events.
We don't understand the rules
or the purpose for which games were played.
We know that they weren't just for entertainment.
And we know that the ball game
was enormously important because
the significant real estate was given over
to ball courts in the major cities in Mesoamerica.
And that's especially true in this area, in Veracruz.
- [Narrator 1] In this area, even secondary cities,
smaller places, all had their own court.
Everyone played the game.
However, objects like these were not used to play the game.
They were used in precessions and in other
very important rituals in these courts.
- [Narrator 2] And so what these are,
are stone representations of a piece of the uniform
that was worn by a ball player.
This was the belt.
- [Narrator 1] And people had to wear these belts
because in the actual ball game,
they had a solid rubber ball bouncing around the court.
If this hit you, you would hemorrhage inside.
And in fact we have Spanish accounts
of people doing just that and dying.
- [Narrator 2] Modern balls, a tennis ball,
this is a thin, hollow ball.
It's quite light.
But rubber is heavy material and
a large, solid piece of rubber
coming at you at hight velocity is gonna hurt.
- [Narrator 1] Exactly, and so they
would build these wicker and leather contraptions
that would allow them to hit the ball
without the ball hitting their body.
- [Narrator 2] And so the ball player, presumably,
would have to be quite skilled
at making sure they could contort their body
to hit the ball with that belt.
- [Narrator 1] So, we have this thing
that looks like one of those belts,
but is used in very important rituals
that only the wealthiest and most important
political players in classic Veracruz would participate in.
The ball game is played everywhere
and if the Spanish were any guide,
the elite would sponsor these ball games.
Kind of like the bread in circuses in Rome.
People all over the gulf coast
would come to these ball games.
It was the way to get everybody together
and it was the way for the elite
to act philanthropically, to be the big people.
They wanted to be seen as great players,
as great athletes, as great heroes.
And one of the ways they would do this
is dress up like ball players.
But, of course, they didn't wear
just any old ball game suit.
They would have green stones.
Again, they were not playing, but they were performing,
they were precessing for everyone
in this highly charged environment.
And, they were intercessing between
the supernatural and the natural
as the great heroes did in the past.
In Veracruz, there were so many small kingdoms
that in many ways, to create spaces
in which they could trade, and debate,
and create alliances, was difficult.
And one of the major ways they would do this
is through the shared language of ball game ritual.
And so you had people coming from everywhere,
inside and outside Veracruz, playing these games,
trading with each other.
- [Narrator 2] But we have to be careful
because we don't really know how these games were played
and we don't really know what the
implications of winning or losing meant.
- [Narrator 1] We don't have the details.
What we do have are hundreds of courts
during the period of classic Veracruz.
We literally have hundreds of these yokes.
And when they're not preserved whole like this,
the Veracruz peoples then would break them up
and put them into their sacred building foundations,
ensuring that the power and the prestige
of these things lived on in their cities.
- [Narrator 2] The one part of this haven't discussed,
which I find stunning, are the two ends.
What you could call the base of the arch.
And what we're seeing are two faces
facing towards each other in profile.
These classic Mesoamerican faces.
They're classic, youthful male faces.
These are the faces of the
youthful heroes throughout Mesoamerica.
In fact, in the Maya area, they're the hero twins.
Two young males who are the
great ball players who defeat death.
(piano music)