The Maya Ballgame

A rubber ball. A stone court. And a sport where the stakes could be life and death.

For more than 2,000 years, Mesoamerican peoples played a remarkable ballgame that became far more than entertainment; across the Maya world, it became a spectacle and a ceremony with religion, politics and power at it's heart.

Today, Tristan Hughes is joined by archaeologist Ed Barnhart to uncover the oldest sporting tradition in the ancient Americas. Together they discover how the Maya ballgame was played, why it became so important, and whether the most chilling aspect of its reputation was actually true: did the losers really face sacrifice?

Chichén Itzá

Listen on Apple

Listen on Spotify

The Maya Collapse

Listen on Apple

Listen on Spotify

The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcast

Presented by Tristan Hughes. Produced and edited by Aidan Lonergan. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds

The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, plus early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(650)

How Slavery Built the Roman Empire

Was the Roman Empire really made by conquest? Or was it powered by something much darker?For centuries, millions of enslaved people sacrificed their lives and their labour on the altar of Roman progre...

16 Aug 1h 7min

Romulus & Remus

The story of Romulus and Remus is one of the most famous myths from the ancient world. But the Romans believed the founding of their city stretched far beyond the tale of the twin brothers. Heroes, ki...

13 Aug 59min

Shapur I: Rome's Greatest Enemy?

Few rulers humbled Rome quite like Shapur I. A King of Kings, he rebuilt the Sasanian Persian Empire, defeated Roman armies and captured Emperor Valerian in one of antiquity's most remarkable military...

9 Aug 58min

Scotland's First Warriors

Three thousand years ago, prehistoric Scotland was a landscape of rival communities, raids and warfare. Bands of warriors fought for power and territory leaving behind extraordinary weapons that revea...

6 Aug 56min

The Catiline Conspiracy

In 63 BC, Rome faced a conspiracy that threatened to tear the Roman Republic apart. At its centre stood two figures: Marcus Tullius Cicero, the grand old orator of Rome and Lucius Sergius Catilina, ac...

2 Aug 1h 4min

Alexander the Great's Mad Scientist

WARNING: graphic descriptions of violence and warfareMeet Diades, Alexander the Great’s overlooked military engineer, the man who made the impossible siege of Tyre happen.Tristan Hughes and Professor ...

30 Jul 1h 12min

Hollywood’s Odyssey: The Historians' Verdict

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film Odyssey brings Homer’s epic roaring back to life and Tristan Hughes and Dr. Emily Hauser are here to unpack every storm, monster and star-making turn. From the bri...

26 Jul 1h 10min