bernard Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
i" The Political Organization of
> Chichen Itza," Ancient Mesoamerica, 15 (2004),
> 167–218
>" The entire Great Ballcourt, I would argue, owed
> its monumentality precisely to the role it played in investiture
> rituals and possibly was less a functioning court than an immense
> effigy of one, as its impossibly high ballcourt rings might
> suggest. It was, in effect, a large arena for legitimating leaders who
> were not necessarily local. "
WVK Wrote:
> > And what to make of "Many scholars"?:
> > "The Great Ballcourt, the largest one ever built
> > in Mesoamerica. Its dimensions are such, many
> > scholars have suggested that actual ballplay
> >would have been impossible. They maintain it may
>> have been used as a ritual space where the
>> ballgame was never played but which was, nevertheless,
>> charged with all the cosmological meaning of an
>> actual ballcourt"
>
> Unnamed "many scholars" I wager that when you
> track this down they are all citing Ringle's
> paper.
A wager you would have lost:
POLITICAL STRUCTURE, MILITARY TRAINING, ANDIDEOLOGY AT CHICHEN ITZA
Claude-François Baudez and Nicolas Latsanopoulos Page 7
"We suggest that the Great Ball Court was built to celebrate the accession of a new high priest, since his buried predecessor is depicted several times in the North Temple and the South Temple.This hypothesis is strengthened by the observation that the ballgame is
“part of the initiation ritual” (Ringle 2004:174) as the decapitated player on the east wall of the North Temple shows."
As a court to play ball, it features a good number of anomalies that led Merle Greene Robertson (1991:109) to think that “ the actual game may never have been played in the Great Ball Court.” If the court presents the expected I-shape, its colossal dimensions(167
×70 m) are truly exceptional. Passing the ball through the stone rings, even with the use of hands, would have been“a feat deemed next to impossible ” considering that the rings are set ten meters high on vertical walls that are set back three meters from the top of the sloping carved benches"
Again I ask.
Designed primarily as a ceremonial space which scenario is more likely?
1) The acoustic character that enables communication, in a normal voice,
from end temple to end temple and from the temples to those inside
the "playing" area was, like St.Paul's Cathedral, accidental
or
2) "Undoubtedly we must consider this feat of acoustics as another
noteworthy achievement of engineering realized millenniums ago by
the Maya technicians"
"Chi Cheen Itza" Manuel Cirerol Sansores 1947 "
WVK
