File:Cyark Tikal Ballcourt.jpg

Ball court in Tikal's Great Plaza, located south of Temple I. Mesoamerican ballcourts are often located in or adjacent to important ceremonial and monumental areas, and were used for playing a ritualized ballgame that involved heavy natural rubber balls, solid wood bumpers around the waist, and, it is thought, possible sacrifice of its losers. Human sacrifice in the Maya lowlands, however, never reached the mass scale later practiced at locales such as Aztec Tenochitlan. Shown in a section from a laser scan image here with measurements (in meters), ballcourts at Tikal were also significantly smaller than later models, such as those at Postclassic Chichen Itza to the north. Regardless