--- title: "The Maya Ballgame and the Beheading Relief at Chichen Itza · Fly Brain Experiment" url: https://theflybrain.com/experiments/maya-ballgame/ description: "The fly captains one team of seven in the Great Ballcourt at Chichen Itza, takes part in a hip-ball rally that ends with the ball through a stone ring, then…" language: en --- # The Maya Ballgame and the Beheading Relief at Chichen Itza The fly captains one team of seven in the Great Ballcourt at Chichen Itza, takes part in a hip-ball rally that ends with the ball through a stone ring, then kneels in the bench relief's tableau and is beheaded with a flint knife while six serpents of blood and a flowering vine rise from its neck, as the six carved bench panels show. **An eight-second loop from the workstation. Full recording pending publication.** [Follow along](#recordings) for the release. ## What the fly saw Frames rendered from the fly’s eye camera at four points in the timeline, each with the 32-column retinal input the connectome model receives at that moment. ![Eye-camera frame at 0:21](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/maya-ballgame-0.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 0:21](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/maya-ballgame-0-retina.png) 0:21 The whispering court ![Eye-camera frame at 0:56](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/maya-ballgame-1.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 0:56](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/maya-ballgame-1-retina.png) 0:56 Hips only ![Eye-camera frame at 1:32](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/maya-ballgame-2.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 1:32](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/maya-ballgame-2-retina.png) 1:32 The flint knife ![Eye-camera frame at 2:07](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/maya-ballgame-3.jpg) ![32-column retinal input at 2:07](https://theflybrain.com/images/eye/maya-ballgame-3-retina.png) 2:07 The skull rack ## Timeline 12 steps, with their times in the experiment 1. 0:00 **The Great Ballcourt** Morning at Chichen Itza. The alley runs 95 m between two walls about 8.5 m high and 36 m apart, with a carved stone ring high in the middle of each. The Temple of the Jaguars stands on the east wall and temples close the north and south ends. Two teams of seven face each other across the centre line; spectators line the tops of the walls. 2. 0:10 **Yoke, kneepad and plumes** The subject captains its team. It wears a thick yoke round the hips to take the ball, a hip cloth, a padded kneepad, a stone in one foreleg and a tall fan of red and yellow feathers. The other team wears green and blue. 3. 0:20 **The whispering court** The subject claps once on the centre line. The sound flutters back and forth between the parallel walls, shown as rings slowed twenty times. In the North Temple a priest speaks quietly, and the walls carry his voice 140 m down the alley to the South Temple. 4. 0:32 **Into play** The solid rubber ball, heavier than a head, is rolled out. The subject drops onto its hip and lifts it off the floor; the ball cracks against the east wall and the other team returns it. No hands, no feet. 5. 0:42 **Hips only** Both teams dive and slide to keep the heavy ball in the air with their hips. It ricochets off the sloping benches and the walls, and every impact rattles between them. 6. 1:02 **Through the stone ring** A captain drives the ball high off the hip. It climbs about six metres, passes through the ring of two feathered serpents and cracks against the wall behind it. The spectators on the walls erupt. Most points were won in the alley; the ring was rarely made. 7. 1:14 **Two lines of seven** The players form up in front of the central bench relief exactly as it is carved: two lines of seven facing a ball that holds a skull. The subject, captain of its line, kneels at the head of it. 8. 1:26 **The flint knife** The other captain takes the subject’s head by an antenna and lifts a flint knife. The subject’s eye looks up at the blade. 9. 1:34 **The relief comes alive** Two strokes and the head comes away in the victor’s foreleg. From the neck of the kneeling body six jets of blood rise as six serpents, and a seventh grows into a flowering vine that arches over the ball. The eye, riding the head, looks down at its own body. 10. 1:48 **As carved on the bench** Behind the living tableau the stone panel shows the same moment: the victor with the knife and the head, the ball with its skull and speech scroll, the kneeling player streaming serpents and flowers. The relief shows this ceremony, not how the game was scored. 11. 1:58 **The skull rack** The head is carried out of the court to the skull platform, whose walls are carved with rows of skulls on stakes. A pole is driven through the temples and the head is slid onto the rack among the others, facing the ballcourt. 12. 2:12 **Winner or loser** Sunset. A last clap rattles between the empty walls; the body still kneels by the ball. Whether the sacrificed player was the losing captain or the winning one is debated: the stones show only who holds the knife. ## Setup - 12 seekable stages over 142 seconds: the Great Ballcourt, yoke, kneepad and plumes, the whispering court, into play, hips only, through the stone ring, two lines of seven, the flint knife, the relief comes alive, as carved on the bench, the skull rack, and winner or loser. - The court is modeled in metres: an alley 30.4 m wide between platforms 95 m long whose inner walls stand 36.3 m apart and 8.5 m high, sloping benches with three carved panels per side, a stone ring carved with two feathered serpents in each wall about 6 m up, the North and South Temples about 140 m apart, the Upper Temple of the Jaguars, the T-shaped skull platform with a rack of bleached fly heads, and El Castillo beyond. - The other captain is an articulated fly; the twelve other players are instanced figures in red-and-yellow macaw or green-and-blue quetzal plumes, with three priests and 72 spectators on the wall tops. - The rally has 18 pre-programmed hip, wall and bench contacts. Display-only sound rings show the court's measured flutter echo and the voice carried from the North Temple to the South Temple, slowed twenty times. - Gore (Low / Standard / Extreme, default Extreme) and blood tone (cinematic red or fly hemolymph, which turns the serpents yellow-green) are scene controls; the eye camera sees the splatter. Who is sacrificed: the losing captain (default; the other captain makes the ring shot) or the winning captain (the fly makes it); the fly is beheaded either way. Sound rings and captions are on by default. - Eight cameras: director, the Great Ballcourt from above, the bench relief and tableau, the east ring, following the subject, the fly eye and severed head, the skull rack, and down the alley from the North Temple; a replay control jumps to the beheading. ## Measurement - Retinal-only input: the eye camera's 32 luminance columns reach the fixed connectome model, measured spikes drive the neural display, and no direct stimulation is sent. - Before the cut the eye rides the subject's head and sees the court and teams, the North Temple, the ball in flight, the ring at the shot, the tableau and the other captain raising the knife against the sky. After the cut it rides the severed head and sees its own kneeling body (a scene-owned double shown only after the cut), the serpents, vine and gore, then the rack and the ballcourt at sunset. - The costume on the head, the severed head itself, the sound rings and the captions are excluded from the eye, and the host's lights are switched off while the scene is loaded (restored on unload). The fly's movements, the match and the cast follow a pre-programmed timeline; measured spikes do not move the fly. ## Limitations - The reliefs show the ceremony, not the rules of play: hip strikes, the yoke, the heavy solid rubber ball and the rarity of ring shots are general Mesoamerican evidence, while the rally, the team size in play, the serve and the ring shot are pre-programmed. - Disputed: whether the sacrificed player was the losing or the winning captain (the relief does not say who won), whether the reliefs record real executions or a mythological ceremony, and the identity of the plant (squash, calabash or another flowering plant). - Approximations: the bench profile and panel length (11 m), the ring's diameter (1.24 m outer, 0.4 m hole), temple massing, the end zones, the spectators, the skull platform's position east of the court and its rack, and the relief itself, redrawn with fly players. The 0.84 m ball with a skull follows the relief's large drawing; no playable ball was that size. - The sound rings are a display, not an acoustic simulation: horizontal rings with mirror images across the two walls, slowed twenty times to 17 m/s. ## Sources - [El juego de pelota de Chichén Itzá, Yucatán (Arqueología Mexicana 44)](https://arqueologiamexicana.mx/mexico-antiguo/el-juego-de-pelota-de-chichen-itza-yucatan) - [Chichen Itza, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichen_Itza) - [Mesoamerican ballcourt, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballcourt) - [Chichen Itza project (Open Heritage 3D)](https://openheritage3d.org/project.php?id=D6D889) - [Tzompantli skull rack (mayan.org)](https://mayan.org/symbols/tsompantli-skull-rack/) - [The Ball Game of Mesoamerica (World History Encyclopedia)](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/604/) ## About The fly captains one team of seven in the Great Ballcourt at Chichen Itza, takes part in a hip-ball rally that ends with the ball through a stone ring, then kneels in the bench relief's tableau and is beheaded with a flint knife while six serpents of blood and a flowering vine rise from its neck, as the six carved bench panels show. [theflybrain.com/experiments/maya-ballgame](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/maya-ballgame/) [rituals-and-ceremonies](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/rituals-and-ceremonies/) [drosophila](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [connectome](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [malecns](https://theflybrain.com/methods/) [specimen-237](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/) - Subject [Specimen 237](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/) - Readme - MaleCNS data · CC BY 4.0 - Views not yet tallied - Stages **12** - Duration **142 s** - Wall separation **36.3 m** - Ring height **about 6 m** - Teams **2 × 7 players** ## Recordings No recordings published yet. - [Follow on YouTube](https://youtube.com/paranoidamerican) - [Follow on TikTok](https://tiktok.com/@paranoidamerica) - [Follow on Instagram](https://instagram.com/paranoidamerican) - [Follow on X](https://x.com/paranoidamerica) ## Packages [workstation source](https://www.patreon.com/cw/ParanoidAmerican/membership)Included for Research Associates · [setup guide](https://theflybrain.com/workstation/setup/) ## Credits 2 [![Specimen 237](https://theflybrain.com/images/specimen-237.jpg)](https://theflybrain.com/specimen-237/) [PA](https://paranoidamerican.com) Official Experiment ## Notes - Setup32% - Measurement16% - Limitations21% - Sources32% ## Share [X](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=The%20Maya%20Ballgame%20and%20the%20Beheading%20Relief%20at%20Chichen%20Itza%3A%20a%20fly%20brain%20experiment.%20%23TheFlyBrain&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheflybrain.com%2Fexperiments%2Fmaya-ballgame%2F) [Threads](https://www.threads.net/intent/post?text=The%20Maya%20Ballgame%20and%20the%20Beheading%20Relief%20at%20Chichen%20Itza%3A%20a%20fly%20brain%20experiment.%20%23TheFlyBrain%20https%3A%2F%2Ftheflybrain.com%2Fexperiments%2Fmaya-ballgame%2F) [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftheflybrain.com%2Fexperiments%2Fmaya-ballgame%2F) ## Commission one Want the fly to do something else? 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[Commission an Experiment · $237](https://paranoidamerican.com/products/custom-fly-brain-experiment) ## More in Rituals & ceremonies [All 32](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/rituals-and-ceremonies/) - [![The Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza: Drought Sacrifice and Dredging: fly brain experiment scene](https://theflybrain.com/images/experiments/sacred-cenote.jpg)0104**The Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza: Drought Sacrifice and Dredging**](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/sacred-cenote/) - [![The Great Death Pit of Ur: Royal Cemetery Sacrifice, c. 2550 BC: fly brain experiment scene](https://theflybrain.com/images/experiments/death-pit-of-ur.jpg)0105**The Great Death Pit of Ur: Royal Cemetery Sacrifice, c. 2550 BC**](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/death-pit-of-ur/) - [![The Temple at Uppsala: The Ninth-Year Sacrifice in the Sacred Grove: fly brain experiment scene](https://theflybrain.com/images/experiments/uppsala-grove.jpg)0106**The Temple at Uppsala: The Ninth-Year Sacrifice in the Sacred Grove**](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/uppsala-grove/) - [![Royal Tombs of Anyang: Shang Human Sacrifice at Xibeigang: fly brain experiment scene](https://theflybrain.com/images/experiments/shang-tombs.jpg)0107**Royal Tombs of Anyang: Shang Human Sacrifice at Xibeigang**](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/shang-tombs/) [Previous0102-maya-bloodletting](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/maya-bloodletting/) [Next0104-sacred-cenote](https://theflybrain.com/experiments/sacred-cenote/) --- Source: https://theflybrain.com/experiments/maya-ballgame/ · TheFlyBrain (theflybrain.com) · Site summary for language models: https://theflybrain.com/llms.txt